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Romancing the Manure

6/14/2021

Perspective to set the tone: McClure's "downsized" dairy will still use up to 2 million gallons of water per year.

The Point Reyes Light misleads the public with a shocking amount of pro-ranching bias in their article about McClure Dairy. Let me walk you through the deception paragraph by paragraph.

The Point Reyes Light article is pasted below, paragraph by paragraph, colored in red, bolded and italicized, followed by my critiques in black.

Tomales Point rancher Bob McClure, the fourth generation on Point Reyes is shutting down his dairy this month. The spring that feeds the ranch is running dry, there is a glut in the organic milk market and he does not have a successor. He has moved to Petaluma, but plans to raise a small number of heifers on the land, which was one of six dairies in the park.

Why do we have to hear about which generation these people are in every article, multiple times per article? I mean EVERY time. Does it change facts of the story in some manner? Keep this in the back of your mind for a bit.
McClure Dairy is not shutting down. This statement is simply untrue. For starters, the McClure’s have multiple locations so even if he gave up his lease here the business continues to operate; that’s not shutting down. Secondly, McClure intends to downsize within the park, which is quite different from shutting down. Third, the park service knows very well that McClure is not leaving. The park service has been approached by environmentalists regarding the lease in the hope of restoring the land to native habitat and were told that McClure is keeping his lease. Considering that the new management plan will allow ranchers to run AirBnB and incorporate other forms of animal agriculture, my guess is that this “historic dairy” will simply find new ways to make a profit while retaining none of its historic properties. The park service is determined to choose any option other than to restore the native habitat.
The spring isn’t just magically running dry. There is a drought, but ground water reserves are drained...by ranchers.
There is a glut in EVERY milk market, not just organic. It is overproduced, dumped, and highly subsidized each and every year by the U.S. Government to keep producing something that continues to get dumped. We will look more deeply at this later.
This article states McClure is planning to raise 150 heifers on the land. 150 heifers is no small number. And heifers mean dairy. There was a time when owning 150 head of cattle would have been considered quite a sizable operation, yet here we are as readers being enticed to overlook this number as if it is the equivalent of shutting down.

Bob McClure is closing his dairy operation in the Point Reyes National Seashore, putting an end to the largest and oldest dairy in the park and leaving the eight families who live on the land without housing or work.

Again, he is not shutting down. This incorrect statement has already been made twice in the first two paragraphs of the article.
Regarding leaving eight families homeless, McClure pays very little to lease his massive expanse. The lease currently available on the park’s website lists the fee at $42,000 annually for over 2 square miles of land. 2 square miles of property at the same price as a 2,000 square foot apartment in the Bay Area. What’s the rush to evict families who have worked for the man for 20 years? Letting people stay a while as they figure out their lives when it costs you nothing to do so is a basic decency even a stranger deserves, much less people who have given their lives to your business. Since we know that McClure intends to keep his lease, what's the rush to evict people that are going to suffer as a result (according to this article)?
Regarding work, sure, it’s officially not McClure’s responsibility to employ these people, but if we are expected to be emotionally drawn into the issue it is only fair to ask what efforts Mr. McClure made to help these people transition. Furthermore, how much notice did they receive? How long before announcing the shut down had he negotiated the selling price of his cattle for the out of state buyer?

The McClures have lived on the peninsula for four generations, longer than any ranching family on the point. But a number of factors—with drought at the top of the list—have pushed Mr. McClure to sell his herd of 650 cows and lay off his staff.

Again, the generation thing. This is a tiresome, but standard strategy to evoke sympathy for ranchers and has been used twice already in only three paragraphs. I’ve asked this before, but I ask again, what families aren’t multigenerational? This is not a magical quality that exists within ranching families. There are many examples of family businesses or trades that get passed on generation after generation, but for some reason when the family business means destroying habitat, producing insane amounts of manure, contaminating water and exploiting animals we are meant to be sympathetic. Imagine these two scenarios of people in need; “Hey, I’m the 5th generation of a family of teachers, but budget cuts have forced me to seek new options.” No cries of sympathy nor government bailouts here. On the other hand, “Hey, my industry is outdated, unsustainable, drains a drought state of what little water is left, leeches off the economy, and is generally cruel and exploitive at its core,” and you get a response from the government of “How much do you need” and from the public “Oh, you poor people.”
How did Mr. McClure have 650 head of cattle if these operations were supposed to shrink when they went organic many years ago? McClure only had 400 cattle in 1993 according to this historical record.

“I’m a dairyman to the core, but there’s another life out there—and I want to see it before I’m six feet under,” he told the Light this week.
The closure comes on the eve of the National Park Service amending the seashore’s general management plan to offer 20-year ranch leases, following six decades of short-term agreements. Mr. McClure said he plans to negotiate a lease to raise heifers in an operation that would be far smaller and gentler on the land. For now, he is keeping 150 young cows to graze.

For the third time, it’s not closing.
Six decades of short term leases indicates the time period at which the lease they originally agreed to as part of the buyout came to an end. It also marks when then superintendent John Sansing was supposed to usher out the expired ranching operations, but instead chose to keep ranching going rather than fulfilling the original intention of the purchase of the seashore. His actions continue to haunt us to this day.
The same paragraph that starts by stating McClure is shutting down admits that McClure is not shutting down but is planning to negotiate a different lease. Even if he ultimately ends up shutting down, this paragraph indicates that he doesn’t intend to.
“Gentler on the land” is an admission of the severe consequences dairy ranches have on land. I just finished a new video and the horrors of McClure’s ranch take center stage in it. There is an incredibly unjustified fantasy circulating that ranches somehow enhance the seashore, but the reality is that McClure’s complex itself is hard on the eyes. As for the land, on numerous occasions I’ve found myself just staring at the seemingly endless expanse of nothingness where once beautiful, native habitat existe. His ranch land looks like a demilitarized zone most months of the year, the only exception being the brief months when his agricultural crops grow tall only to be mowed down with native animals still hiding inside of it. The plant species he grows are all nonnative and many are invasive in nature, further hindering a battle for disappearing native coastal prairie that we are already badly losing. In other words, the ranch’s only silver lining is actually a bad thing.

The McClure Dairy takes center stage in this horrifying video of Point Reyes

Mr. McClure is 60 and none of his three daughters want to take on the business after him. He has had four eye surgeries that left him vulnerable to the wind and sun. He wants to travel and spend more time with his wife, Ruth, on their small ranch in Petaluma, where she works. But although these personal factors underlie his decision, he said the main reason for shutting down was the fear of running out of water.
The drought in Marin is the worst since 1977, and it has the potential to become the worst ever. Already, farmers are scaling back their crops or skipping the season altogether, and ranchers are making plans to truck in water and upgrade their collection systems. Only 15 inches of rain have fallen in Inverness this winter, the driest year on record. The winter before was not much better, with 23 inches of rain, compared to an average of 37.5 inches.

It continues to baffle me that as we face another historic drought our concerns center around those who are responsible for draining the land of water. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, “We’ve got to eat right?” Yes, we do, I can't argue that. But all this water isn’t used to grow crops for human consumption. It grows hay. It grows alfalfa. It grows silage. It goes into troughs so the heifers can drink upwards of forty gallons a day. Years from now a product will finally be produced for human consumption, but only after a shockingly inefficient system has drained the earth each and every day of those years.
This state is constantly threatened with or experiencing drought. Why didn’t they upgrade their collection systems long ago?

The McClure ranch relies on a single spring that is historically abundant but is no longer recharging. At this time of year, the water typically overflows into Abbotts Lagoon, but water levels are instead falling—and at least five months without significant rainfall lie ahead.

If this spring wasn’t being unnaturally drained perhaps there would be a reserve for hard times like this...a reserve that the local plants and animals desperately need. Yes, for those of you who forgot, there’s more than dairy operations trying to survive out there. Amazingly, even as drought conditions were deemed desperate enough to allow ranchers to pump water away from a wildlife lagoon, the park service simultaneously insisted the elk locked in Tomales Point had “plenty of water”.
For the reasons I listed above, I don’t like the use of the phrase ‘water levels are falling” as if there is no outside force acting upon the situation. The more appropriate and accountable phrase would be “ water levels are being dropped by human use”. Surely, there must be at least a few birders and other wildlife enthusiasts reading this post, so to you I ask, “How do you think the removal of water from a lagoon affects both the plants and animals? How about the disturbing noise pollution from the pumps? Think that has any effect?”

Mr. McClure shares a pond with the neighboring Kehoe dairy as a backup, but if and when that source were to run dry, both dairies would have to either move their herds or truck in water, an expensive proposition. The McClure dairy uses an estimated 20,000 gallons of water each day, mostly for the cows to drink but also to wash manure out of the barn.

I want to examine the figure of McClure using 20,000 gallons a day. First of all, the 20,000 gallons a day figure in itself is horrifying...how anyone doesn’t cringe when they look at our water-starved state while reading that just one “family size” dairy alone uses that much of our disappearing, precious resource can only be attributed to cognitive dissonance. Yet I can’t help suspect the number is actually bigger. This article states Mr. McClure is downsizing from 650 head of cattle. The conservative figure of dairy cow water consumption on a daily basis is 30,000 gallons. During hot weather it is estimated at 50,000. The first calculation comes to 19,500 gallons per day and the second comes to 32,500. So we have already reached or greatly surpassed the 20,000 gallon figure just for cattle drinking water, not factoring in how much water is used to clean the barns or water the fields or other various activities. Would it not be fair to also include the water consumption of the 30 employees living at the ranch; after all, they are part of the dairy production? How about defecation ponds? As long as the pond is used to liquify cow manure then it is no longer usable for other creatures (Other than the noxious weeds choking out the water’s oxygen as part of the eutrophication process) therefore it is water consumed by the dairy operation.

The lack of rain causes the grass to grow slower, so the dairy must purchase more feed to nourish the cows. Feed prices are rising because farmers are also facing water restrictions.

What grass? You mean the fields of invasive weeds that are generously referred to as grass-fed pasture? And that’s during the “lush” time of year! Most months of the year McClure Dairy looks like it was used to test atomic bombs with the only signs of life being the native brush surviving on steep inclines that the cattle and ranchers couldn’t destroy. The little grass that does grow has to be seeded each year with truckloads of seeds purchased from outside the park and transported in. Again, what an efficient industry (cough, cough)!

Beyond the drought, the economics of dairying are not as strong as they once were, Mr. McClure said. He sells his milk to Clover Sonoma, and the company sets his production limits and price per gallon. Values are down 30 percent from their peak due to a glut of organic milk producers, he said.

The economics of dairying haven’t been strong for a very long time. According to the document ‘An Administrative History of Point Reyes’ dairies were starting to sell as early as the 20s. One might argue that the government purchase of the land these dairies are currently on is the only way they managed to survive at all. They were given multimillion dollar payouts and the option to lease back the land (at well below market value) at a time when many dairies were selling to developers. Add to the above list the government subsidies the dairy industry receives and we’ve got a full blown charity case on our hands.
Again, it’s not a glut of just organic producers, it’s a glut of dairy. Period.
Many people face economic challenges, including the threat of their business failing. But in Mr. McClure’s case he was approached by Miyoko Schinner of Miyoko’s Creamery who offered to help him transition from dairy to plant-based dairy products. Miyoko also sought out the employees who were laid off, ready to offer them all jobs. My understanding is that they all now work at another dairy, but if any of those people are reading this, you might want to reconsider your employment. Miyoko’s pays more, offers health benefits, retirement plans, meals, and paid vacation.

Last month, he sold 80 of his cows to an out-of-state buyer that he declined to name. The buyer was pleased, and he offered to purchase the rest of the herd. At a time when people are struggling to sell organic cows, Mr. McClure was enticed by the offer. He sat down with his family and they all encouraged him to sell. The first load went out on Tuesday and the rest will go over the next two weeks.
Mr. McClure said he may hire help after he transitions out of dairying, but once the lactating cows are gone, his business will have no income, he said.
The consequences for the around 30 people who live on his ranch are enormous. The children attend local schools, and a few of the families have lived there for over 20 years. They have one month left of work and two months before they are expected to move out. No one knows what will come next.

Having just interviewed an ex ranch hand at Mendoza-owned B Ranch, this tune sounds familiar. He and his family were suddenly homeless and jobless when Mendoza decided to make changes. The employees were told that the ranch was shutting down, but of course that didn’t end up being true. B Ranch is still running today.
Why exactly do the families have two months before they are expected to leave? McClure isn’t leaving. The land isn’t going away. These people gave him 20 plus years, yet they are out on their asses relatively overnight? It would be one thing if McClure was shelling out money for the housing, but he’s not. In fact, what he pays for his monstrous complex may surprise you.

“It’s like a really big bucket of cold water dumped on top of your head,” said Miguel Galarza, who has lived on the ranch with his wife and four kids for the last eight years.
Mr. McClure gathered his staff last week to break the news. He became emotional when he talked about that moment. “Super good guys,” he said. “Our success has always been from our employees.”

Jesus Romo has been the dairy foreman for the last 22 years. He starts each day at 6 a.m., checking the cows and giving marching orders. He enjoys the job because the weather is pleasant, Mr. McClure is a cheerful boss and the housing is relatively nice. When he told his two daughters that they were moving, he said they started crying.

“All of our lives were here,” he said. “This is part of my family.”
He said he has no choice but to move on and look for work at another dairy. “I don’t know how to do anything else but taking care of cows—cows are my life,” he said. “It’s sad to move and do it somewhere else, but we have to keep going.”

The displacement of families exposes the intrinsic problem with tying housing to employment. The last time this many West Marin families were displaced at once was when Drakes Bay Oyster Company closed in 2014; at that time, 32 mostly Hispanic men and women lost their jobs, and the 15 families who lived onsite had to move. The housing market has only become tighter and more expensive since then.

“Trying to find homes for eight families right now when there are very little vacancies, and the urgency of having to find a home when you’re worried about public health, is very concerning,” said Leelee Thomas, a planning manager for Marin County.

Rosa Rodriguez moved to Point Reyes two years ago from the Central Valley after her husband lost his job at another dairy. Her two older sons attend Tomales High, and the youngest goes to West Marin School. She appreciated being in an unpopulated area during the pandemic and is hoping the family can find another dairy close by, where her husband can keep milking cows and her children can stay in class.

“It could destroy our education. It’s very hard for someone to focus when a lot of things are happening,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of options. There aren’t a lot of jobs, or places to live.”

Wow. The Point Reyes Light spent more time focused on the drama of the displaced workers than anything else in the article. I feel like I don’t need to spend too much more time on this one. It is a sad and challenging situation these people are in and they will continue to face these situations as long as they make their living seeking employment at dairy ranches. History indicates that dairies dump their employees in this manner or worse so if life improvement is the goal, contact Miyoko’s Creamery and join an industry of the future, not one of the past that is based on exploiting animals as well as the employees.
If you have read this far I’ll risk going a little deeper on this one. The dairy workers state they are in a tough situation because the don’t know where they will go and don’t know how to do anything else. What’s interesting about this is that they have the same qualifications as the ranch owners. Throughout history we see statements such as, “This is my life, this is all I know.” In his testimony against the creation of the park Joseph Mendoza even says, “We are dairy farmers, we are good for nothing else.” When a dairy worker says something of this nature somehow it is enduring. When an immigrant worker says it we scream, “Get some skills, get some education, get some training.” Or if they aren’t employed by that particular rancher the cry is “Get out of this country!”

The future of the McClure ranch will depend on an upcoming appraisal and the park’s lease terms. The National Park Service will officially update its management plan by July, after which appraisers will determine a fair market rent for each ranch. Rental rates will account for activities occurring on the ranch, so Mr. McClure will likely pay less for a downsized operation.

“We look forward to working with the McClures to identify a transition approach on I Ranch consistent with the General Management Plan amendment,” outreach coordinator Melanie Gunn wrote in an email.

If Mr. McClure does not sign a lease, the park service would be guided by the succession policy outlined in the amendment. The policy says that if a rancher does not wish to enter into a new lease, the park would consider proposals from other leaseholders or ranch workers within the park. If none of them are interested in operating a ranch, then the park would pursue a public process to identify an appropriate future use of the land.

McClure will likely pay even less?! Why don't we just give him millions of dollars and let him stay? Oh, we already did that.
Last on the list of succession are members of the public, you know, the people who actually own the land. I don’t know what the appraisal will result in, but McClure has been paying rent based on the 1800s so I’m guessing he won’t like anything else. Be assured, the park will do what they can to keep him there.

In recent years, the McClure ranch has become a target of anti-ranching and pro-elk activists; last fall, over 200 people staged a protest on the driveway. Mr. McClure didn’t have much to say on the matter; his dairy is not in the range of any elk herds. During the protest, he greeted them and observed.

Oh my. McClure Ranch has become a target? There was one event. One. Ever. And it was peaceful and at the edge of the ranch driveway, which, by the way, is public property, not Mr. McClure’s private property. The most disruptive thing witnessed at the event was Melanie Gunn rudely laughing and speaking loudly with Mr. McClure while the peaceful demonstrators attempted to address the crowd.
What does the statement, “not in the range of any elk herds mean”? His dairy is absolutely in the range of elk herds, especially if they weren’t imprisoned with a gigantic fence. On my last three trips I photographed bull elks directly across from the McClure Ranch, presumably escapees trying to find water...or forage...or mates...or just to range as they are instinctively meant to do. Other than Kehoe, McClure is the second closest ranch to the Tomales Point herd so I’ll have to argue the “not being in range” claim.

Activist groups contracted water tests near his ranch this winter, and the tests showed bacteria levels that greatly exceeded recreational standards. But it was just two days of testing after rain, and credible water monitoring requires multiple tests over time to paint an accurate picture. No regular water monitoring has been conducted in the area since 2013, though the regional water board requires dairies to maintain records on manure application and storage, pasture and riparian conditions and more.

The first line of this paragraph would entice one to believe that a few witless environmental extremists bought a water testing kit online and gave it their best shot, but the reality is that the water tests were conducted by Douglas Lovell, a state certified environmental engineer. The samples were analyzed by McCampbell Analytical Inc. of Pittsburgh, California.
What is the article’s intent by stating, “it was just two days of testing after rain?”. Are we to believe the tests aren’t accurate because it was after rain (a very brief rain at that)? Any readers that don’t know better, and I’m guessing that’s most, would assume this means that testing after rain is bad, yet the California Regional Water Quality Control Board actually REQUIRES testing to take place within 24 hours of rain at operations such as McClure’s (see page 32 of the included document). The author of this Point Reyes Light Article didn’t bother to find that out, instead likely referring to the park service staff who know nothing about how to conduct these tests since they don’t ever conduct them. When better to get an idea of how much pollution is coming from the ranches? I suppose ranch supporters want the test conducted following the longest stretch of no rain possible. Maybe we should just wait until there is no water left to test. Interestingly enough, the test actually stated that the results would have been even worse if it hadn’t been a drought year.
We need more tests to get an accurate picture...well, wouldn’t it be great if the park service cared enough about the health of the park to be doing this testing themselves so that citizens don’t eventually feel compelled to take on this duty? It would be great to have regular testing and get a really accurate picture, but who is going to do it? Shall concerned citizens continue to fit the bill all year long for ongoing tests only to have ranch-supporting journalists deny the results anyway? And what makes people think that the water quality will improve as long as the source of the problem continues to be present? For the sake of argument let’s pretend that the test results were skewed. The results exceeded safe levels by astonishing figures. If one were to chop the actual results in half they would still greatly exceed safe levels, so what fairy tale ending do people believe can possibly be arrived at with other testing? Last time the park service was involved in the testing, 2013, the results put Point Reyes ranches at the top of water contamination locations in California. No wonder they haven’t continued to test, being as how their job description seems to be to defend ranching in the seashore at any cost.
A last word about dairy contamination in Point Reyes. The park service and water board allow the ranchers to do their own monitoring, submitting copy and paste waivers. I asked Melanie Gunn, outreach coordinator for the park, about these waivers and was told that dairies get their own criteria for water examinations based on the accepted reality that dairies are so intensely damaging to the environment. But hey, another 20 years of dairying should clear up any issues, right?

Mr. McClure said he complies with all of the rules. The cows go in the loafing barn during the winter to prevent manure from washing away, and the creek areas are fenced off, he said.

What does this mean, that the cows go in the loafing barn in the winter to keep the manure from washing away? The cattle are forced to live in a barn 24/7? I thought part of the allure of the organic dairies was the free ranging, pasture grazing cattle? Regardless, I already know they aren’t always in the barn in the winter because I have filmed them outside the barn in the winter on numerous occasions. No matter where the cattle are, the real question is where does the manure go? What do people think happens? How many options are there when answering this question? It doesn’t disappear with the wave of a wand or get sent to the moon. The manure ends up in either the water or the soil and to say ”the soil” is the same as saying “the water” because water seeps through the soil toward the ocean all year round. Just ask the park service; they reassure us that this seepage is all that is required for elk survival.
Rancher fences must not work very well because cattle are photographed often in sensitive habitat areas such as Abbott’s Lagoon, Keho Creek, and Drake’s Estero.

In his 38-year tenure, he remodeled the milking operation to make it more efficient and brought in new technology, like a no-till seed drill and automatic scrapers in the barns. Many of the improvements have been made to help conserve the environment, he said.

Oh man, I have to laugh out loud in the face of anyone who nodded in approval while reading this paragraph. He installed automatic scrapers in his barns for the environment?! It scrapes the insane amount of urine and feces that his chosen industry produces off the floor without the use of physical human labor. That sounds like it was installed for human and economic benefit, not the environment’s. Unless he stops producing the problem it doesn’t matter how he removes the problem from his barns. Are we supposed to be thankful that he sprays less water while hosing down the barns? How about if instead we start recognizing how insane it is to support an industry that produces shit and uses precious water to clear it away?
The no-till seed drill is for the environment? No, it is a more efficient way to plant crops. Crops that exist on land that was once beautiful, native habitat. Now it is full of nonnative plants and cow manure. McCure’s fields have nothing to do with the environment other than being a constant assault upon it. No form of seed drill will change the fact that the field is an agricultural commodity, not wildlife habitat. And when native animals make the mistake of trying to use McClure’s fields for habitat they pay the ultimate price by being chopped up in mowing blades during the spring harvest. And again, these are crops to feed cattle, not humans.

Even with the upgrades, the ranch retains its layout from the 1800s. Nine features predating 1925 are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the large hay barn built in the 1880s. From James to Jim to Ron and now Bob, the McClures have been milking cows on Point Reyes since 1889, when products traveled by schooner to San Francisco. James McClure bought his first dairy in 1906 and the family moved around to several ranches before leasing the I Ranch in 1930.

Since 1971 McClure has added 35,732 square feet of structures. That nearly doubles all structures prior to 1971 (19,019 square feet). McClure Dairy looks like an open, festering wound on the landscape, period. Perhaps the author of this article wanted us to not realize the word “layout” means very title in terms of the physical, visual changes. The McCure Ranch is an eyesore that can be seen from great distances.
The entire rest of the paragraph can be summarized as attempts to romanticize the history of dairying while ignoring all history that came before it and ignoring the consequences we’ve endured since its arrival.

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