business

PLAINVIEW, MINN. - Maurie and Rita Young are much like other operators of large dairy farms in Minnesota. They volunteer at the State Fair, their children belonged to Future Farmers of America -- and their cows are milked by Mexican workers.

The Plainview couple have even taken Spanish lessons and participated in a farmers' tour to Mexico. They never set out to be global citizens, but like farmers statewide, they couldn't find enough locals willing to work long hours in less-than-fragrant cow barns.

Dairy experts say that most of the state's large dairy farms have some Hispanic workers, part of a national trend.

"I used to be pretty much a one-man show," said Maurie Young, standing outside a large barn being cleaned by a young Mexican man.

"I was working 5 in the morning until 9 at night, seven days a week," Young said. "And at the end of the year, I had little to show for it. I figured there had to be a better way."

So the Youngs expanded their business. With four sons uninterested in farming, they turned to the workers they had seen at other farms. They now call it "the best thing we could have done."

Hispanics made up about 40 percent of all U.S. agricultural workers in 2005, according to the Census Bureau. They've long harvested fruit and vegetables and worked in canning and packing factories. But their move to northern dairy farms started in earnest about a decade ago and has grown ever since, said Bob Lefebvre, executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association.

There is no firm tally on what's going on in Minnesota, but local farming experts say it's quietly become a way of life for this quintessential Minnesota industry. The state is the nation's sixth-largest milk producer.

"It started coming to the Midwest in the mid-1990s as herd sizes grew and families couldn't keep up with them," said Jim Dickrell of Monticello, Minn., editor of the national trade publication Dairy Today. "With these larger herds, say, 150 or more, Hispanic labor is now very common. It's almost ubiquitous."

Knock on the door

It was a knock at the front door that prompted the Youngs to hire some of their first Hispanics in the summer of 2001. Three young men in T-shirts and jeans were standing on their doorstep, offering to work.

The Youngs, who wanted to add another milking shift, didn't hesitate. The men had documentation needed to work, and the Youngs needed the workers. Said Rita Young: "We really needed the help. And we knew [Hispanics] were good workers and willing to learn."

Today, nearly all of the Youngs' 21 workers are Hispanic.

To improve communication with his new workers, Maurie Young took a Spanish class for local farmers in Plainview. There, he met Shaun Judge Duvall, a Spanish teacher from Alma, Wis., who has become the cultural bridge between farmers in southeastern Minnesota and Mexican workers.

To learn more about their employees as people, the Youngs also signed up for a trip to Mexico, organized by Judge Duvall. There they met the families of some Minnesota farm workers, in poor villages. The experience was humbling, the Youngs said.

The Youngs say their transition to foreign workers has been smooth, partly because they had participated in a foreign-exchange program earlier and because they found a terrific bilingual chief herdsman.

Likewise, that herdsman, a soft-spoken young man named Javier Martinez, can't say enough about his new work. "I grew up with animals, and I love working with cows," said Martinez, who does everything from caring for newborns to assisting the veterinarian to overseeing the labor on the farm. "And I love small towns. Here, we can wake up and see the sun."

Here, Mexicans also can earn a salary that relatives back home could only dream of. The milkers earn more than $25,000 a year, said Maurie Young. And Martinez earns considerably more. Some live in mobile homes that the Youngs have bought for them near Plainview. Others live in apartments nearby.