Almost 10 years ago, I stepped foot on the first dairy farm I had ever worked on and it was nearby, in the Southland region.
I immediately fell in love with it - the cows, the routine, the connection to the animals and the land. It was a way of life that I knew was going to be my future.
And now it has come full circle; after years of working on dairies in the United States, starting my own dairy in Montana, and studying US dairy policy, I am here to once again get inspired by New Zealand dairy farmers.
Being in New Zealand is an American dairy farmer's dream come true. Of course, it doesn't hurt that I left a record-breaking Montana winter - there is nothing quite like -33deg to give you a shock in the morning - and arrived in the middle of a beautiful, blue sky summer.
While I was feeding out hay bales, farmers here were busy cutting and baling. As I was dreaming over seed catalogues for my garden, New Zealanders were eating strawberries and sweet corn.
It is not just the change of seasons that gets me so excited to be here. Across the dairy industry in the United States, New Zealand is held up as the prime example of successful, large-scale grass-based and seasonal dairy farming.
In the US, more than two-thirds of cows live in confined feeding situations in herds that have 500 cows or more.
Allowing dairy cows to graze and get most of their feed from grass and forages? Impossible. Milking your entire herd seasonally and taking time off each year? Unthinkable.
But in New Zealand, both of these are a reality and form the basis for an incredibly successful way of life.
Across the US, dairy farmers are struggling. The dairy crisis in 2009 is still having an effect on a farmers' financial situation, with many burning through everything they had saved to keep their farms afloat when for many months milk income was well below the cost of production.
Since then, milk prices have risen some but have not kept pace with the price of corn, soy, fuel, labour costs, and other inputs.
Dairies are getting bigger and producing more for less. Some farmers are branching out into processing so that they can keep the added value from making cheese, ice cream, or artisan butter. And unfortunately, between 2001 and 2011, more than 37,000 dairy farms have hung up the milkers for good.
Which brings me right back around to why I am thrilled to be here in New Zealand.
Last year, I received my master's degree and wrote my thesis on the effects of supply management on Montana's dairy farmers (Montana is the only state in the Union that has a quota system).
Then I received a Fulbright grant to come to the University of Otago to do a match study with dairy farmers in a free-market system, pretty much the exact opposite of Montana.
New Zealand dairy farmers are successful, financially and with on-farm production. So much so that young people actually want to get into the dairy business. You say you want to be a dairy farmer in the US and people look at you like you've got two heads.
New Zealand dairy farmers have pretty much stuck to the pasture model of production and have remained at a smaller scale. Farmers here do not necessarily breed only for quantity, but also for quality, knowing the milk is most likely going to be shipped overseas as food ingredient.
So why is that? Why is it that farmers in New Zealand can make a great living milking cows and have chosen to stay at a scale that is considered a ''small farm'' in the US?
One would expect that in a system without government intervention and a market that can absorb all the milk that is produced, that farms would be moving towards confinement and milking as many cows as possible.
What is it about farming here, in this policy atmosphere, that has guided farmers to decisions about staying small and seasonal? And what will change when environmental concerns become ever more pressing? Will farmers have to take other considerations on their farm when thinking about farm decisions? In what ways will governmental oversight about farm growth and management change when environmental regulation is added to the mix and how will that affect farmers?
Over the long term, these seemingly independent policy decisions work to change the entire fabric of farming across a region or nation.
Montana enacted supply management in 1990 to protect small farms - in that time farms have only got bigger, more small farms are shutting their doors than the national average, and not a single new dairy has been started because buying quota is prohibitively expensive and small or beginning farmers cannot afford the extra cost.
If my research in New Zealand can help dairy farmers, co-operatives, policy makers, and other involved in the dairy industry understand how policy decisions affect actual, on-the-ground farm decisions, then perhaps we can start moving towards changes that will support farmer success at any scale.
If you are a dairy farmer and would like to be interviewed for my project, please ring me at 021 038-2362 or email lauralee.ginsburg@gmail.com.
I would love to visit your farm, give you a hand with chores, and meet your cows.
- Laura Ginsburg is a Fulbright scholar with a master of science in environmental studies degree from the University of Montana. She is based at the Centre For Sustainability at the University of Otago.