Pennsylvania farmers struggle as milk prices remain low

Dean and Suzanne Curtis paid a price in sweat, 14- and 16-hour workdays, scraped knuckles and vacations they never took.But together, the Venango Township couple built something. They own 515 acres, a herd of 150 dairy cows and the buildings and equipment needed to produce thousands of gallon of milk each year.In 2009, they were just months from having all of it paid off.Then came the recession and a historic tumble in the price of milk. Today, two refinanced mortgages and seven years of unreliable milk prices later, the idea of being debt-free seems like a distant memory, said Dean Curtis, who has been farming for 50 of his 64 years. Few places in Pennsylvania have seen a more dramatic decline than Erie County, where the number of dairy farms fell 57 percent between 2002 and 2012, sliding from 170 to just 73. That’s according to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, which provides the most recent numbers available.