Brothers Tyler and Austin Beck have talked many times over the years about the future of their fourth-generation family farm.
"My brother and I talk all the time about where we want to be in the future," Tyler Beck, 30, said in May. "We want to maintain the legacy. ... There is a sense of pride. It is what your grandfather did. There are the same goals, but it looks a lot different than it did 100 years ago."
“That pushes me to want to keep this business growing and successful,” said Austin Beck, 27. “It's something we just love to do.”
Beck recalls playing with toy tractors with his brother in their youth, moving Lego logs and Jenga pieces into rows.
“We would farm on our carpet," he said.
The full-size Beck Farm was started in 1920 on Red Mill Road in Freeville by their great-grandfather, Martin Beck, with a few hundred cows. Their grandfather, Ron Beck, and father, Russ Beck followed him into farming.
The four generations of Becks who have owned the farm all graduated from what is now Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Martin Beck began share-cropping for the dean of the school, and eventually bought the family farm from him, Tyler Beck said.
The farm now has 2,000 milking cows on 3,600 acres between the two locations, including 800 cows on the farm in Virgil near Greek Peak.
Ron Beck, the second generation owner of the farm, is retired. Russ Beck, his son and the father of Tyler and Austin Beck, oversees the entire operation.
An outside partner, Jerry Coller, is the lead manager of the crop side of the business, working with Austin Beck.
Tyler Beck has been responsible for the development of the Virgil operation since the family bought the satellite farm in 2012, expanding it from 350 to 800 cows.
The Beck farm significantly increased in size between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s. It now produces about 4.4 million pounds of milk per month.
Milk prices last year were among the highest in history as the price paid farmers averaged about $27 per 100 pounds of milk, Beck said. Prices have since settled back to about $21, which is typical for recent years.
While the revenue farmers received from milk sales climbed, inflation drove up costs, offsetting much of the temporary gains, Tyler Beck said.
"Everything was inflated," Beck said. "Our costs were inflated. It was in one hand and out the other to pay expenses."
The price of feed, one of the most significant costs for a dairy farm, rose sharply, as did wages and fuel, he said. There are 35 full-time employees on the Beck farms.
The farm grows all of its forages and some of its grain to feed cows, but much of the grain is purchased.
Dairy farms operate on thin profit margins, Beck said. Increasing herd size to spread out fixed costs like insurance per cow, and relying on technology to reduce costs and increase production are the keys to success.
That includes making cows comfortable, with mattresses to sleep on and fans to cool them in hot weather, which increases production.
The two Beck farm sites are about nine miles apart, allowing the business to share employees and resources between the two sites, Beck said.
Increasing efficiency is the key to a dairy operation, Beck said. He noted that milk production, per-cow, has doubled to 100 pounds per day for each cow since the 1950s.
"If you look at industry trends, not many have the same gains of efficiency in the last 50 years," Beck said.
Farms rely heavily on technology in recent decades. Every aspect of the operation involves technology, he said.
"Everything on a farm today is automated," Beck said. "That's something the general public is surprised about. They think old school."
The Becks continue to look toward options for the future.
“We’re all in agreement that we have to grow to stay competitive in our market,” Austin Beck said. “If you are not growing your business, you’re falling behind. We’ve maxed out on our footprint. We have to decide whether to grow here or find opportunities elsewhere.”
Tyler Beck said he hopes his children — 7-month-old daughter Juliette and 4-year-old son Addison — follow him into farming as the fifth generation. Austin does not have children.
"That's always a hope, that they grow up in the farm and fall in love with it," Tyler Beck said. "They call farming not a job but a lifestyle."
