Milk and Money | Many a hope is pinned on a deal to make dairy cows the next Maine export
Jay Roebuck comes off as a simple farmer, with his gruff manner, weathered denim overalls and easy way around large animals and even larger machinery. But the Turner livestock exporter is a key player in a new business venture that’s reviving hope for two traditional Maine industries through some thoroughly modern means.
One doesn’t often associate international trade or cutting-edge bioscience with cud-chewing dairy cows, but Roebuck is part of a disparate network that’s overcome a mess of red tape and logistics to ship genetically exceptional U.S. Holstein heifers from Eastport to eager buyers in the nation of Turkey. Maine got in on the deal largely through serendipity, but recent months have seen farmers, truckers, longshoremen, shippers, politicians and bureaucrats come together to bring the deal to fruition.
Eastport is now preparing to handle its third shipment of dairy cows, after this summer becoming the first port in New England to win coveted temporary permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to export livestock. Since July, more than 1,000 heifers from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and the Northeast have passed through Roebuck’s farm for quarantining on their way to Eastport, where they’re corralled onto specially designed containers and loaded onto the deck of a Dutch cargo freighter.
The cows, all of them pregnant, save for a few that calve aboard the ship during the two-week journey across the North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea, arrive in the port city of Mersin into the hands of Turks keen to use the animals to establish domestic dairy herds.
Several thousand more heifers, valued for their health, reliable milk production and, thanks to depressed domestic milk prices, availability, are contracted for shipment in coming months. “We can compete anywhere in the world,” Roebuck says, sitting in his pickup truck, his hands greasy from working a machine to wrap his hay bales for the winter. The containers, equipped with automatic watering, narrow windows and ventilation fans, can ship pregnant heifers more comfortably and in smaller numbers than traditional livestock carriers, he says. “Our real goal with the containers is it should open up more business worldwide.”
For now, Roebuck’s more focused on the inherently risky business of transporting live, healthy animals that will meet his customers’ specifications. It’s a novel business venture with the potential to revitalize the state’s marine and agricultural industries as well as its poorest county, and one that certainly wasn’t listed in business development officials’ playbook. But the economics of supply and demand that led Roebuck and his partners to make the deal will continue to guide them as the venture progresses, despite the politics and expectations cropping up around it.
That means not ruling out another of Maine’s ports equipped to handle the livestock shipments: Portland. Situated in Maine’s second-richest county, the port may not need the work as badly as Eastport, but better logistics or pricing could sway the deal in southern Maine’s favor. Portland is also closer to Roebuck’s farm in western Maine. “We want this to be profitable for people, but it also has to be profitable for us,” he says. “If it’s not profitable for us, it doesn’t matter what port we have, it’s not going to work.”
A new market
Juan Moreno’s voice comes through a scratchy cell phone connection as metallic bangs clang all around him in the Turkish port city of Mersin. “I’m watching the animals being unloaded right now,” he says. As co-CEO of the Texas reproductive services company contracted to provide the heifers, Moreno personally oversees the shipments from Eastport to ensure the animals arrive in top condition. “How many you got left, eight?” he asks a man in the background. “Ten more to go,” Moreno says.
In coming months, thousands more cows will go. Moreno’s company, Sexing Technologies of Navasota, Texas, has a deal to provide 9,000 heifers to the Turks, with two more shipments scheduled in November and up to four in December. Over the next year, he expects to send more than 60,000 cows through Maine to Turkey, all of them impregnated using his company’s technology, which guarantees the sex of the cows’ offspring with roughly 90% accuracy. “We had a baby bull born on the trip, and he’s doing well,” Moreno says.
All of the cows arrived in perfect condition despite some rough seas, thanks to the containers, or “comfortable animal transportation suites” as Sexing Technologies calls them. The company designed the containers, which boast 24-hour watering systems, fans, windows and comfortable bedding, to ensure the animals’ health and comfort along their overseas trek. Thirteen cows occupy each one, a number that prevents crowding but packs the animals in tightly enough that they don’t get tossed around by rough seas. “The animal has to survive for the buyer, in optimal condition to keep them coming back,” Moreno says.
The agreement with Turkish buyers required that the animals be shipped from a state free of blue tongue disease, an insect-borne virus that primarily sickens sheep but can also strike cattle. The port of Wilmington, Del., was a contender for the work, but a Dutch shipping line, Spliethoff, already had a boat headed to Eastport to pick up pulp from the Domtar mill in Baileyville. Maine fit the criteria, so Moreno arranged for the cows to hitch a ride. “After that first shipment, we kind of like it up there,” he says good-naturedly. Roebuck, a cattle trader, operates a farm that’s licensed as a cattle quarantining facility, so he and his wife, Sue, got in on the deal. They also coordinate the animals’ health checks and pedigree paperwork.
Turkey’s interest in the animals is driven by a growing population that consumes a high percentage of dairy products. In July, the country’s government ended an eight-year ban on cattle imports, prompted by the mad cow scare, in attempt to curb skyrocketing domestic red meat prices.
Sexing Technologies was heavily involved in shipping cattle before the scare, which began in the United States six years ago, crippled American exports of the animals. Now that foreign countries are again welcoming shipments of U.S.-bred cows, the Texas company is back in the game in what Moreno sees as a way to support its primary customer, the dairy industry. Farmers are paid an average $1,300 per animal, a competitive market price for cows Roebuck describes as excess animals that often aren’t essential to farmers’ milking operations.
The venture is not yet profitable, but Moreno says he expects to be in the black by the fourth or fifth shipment. “We don’t want to lose money and obviously we like to make a little profit,” Moreno says. “We’re part of transporting, 30, 40, 60,000 animals out of the U.S. this year. We believe that we’re supporting the industry.”
Port potential
While the potential benefits to Eastport of this cow shipping operation have been widely extolled, the tone shifts to cautious when Portland is mentioned as an alternative site. The third shipment in the contract almost didn’t pass through Eastport at all, as Moreno and Roebuck had planned to export the animals through Portland for the first time before the shipping line changed course at the last minute.
The USDA has not yet approved the southern city for the same temporary exemption that’s allowing Eastport to export livestock, according to U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ office. But Maine’s congressional delegation has asked the USDA to designate both ports as permanent livestock exportation facilities, a fact that’s not mentioned in the delegation’s press release announcing the work for Eastport. From the state’s perspective, “We’d love to see Down East Maine get some rewards of this activity,” says Agriculture Commissioner Seth Bradstreet, but Portland may also serve the shipper’s needs, he adds.
Eastport’s temporary permission allows the livestock exportation on a shipment-by-shipment basis, rather than for a set period of time, explains Chris Gardner, executive director of the Eastport Port Authority. The first shipment consisted of 470 cows, followed by a second of nearly 600 animals. “We have been the first port in the Northeast to move cattle,” Gardner says. The business also doubles the port’s existing customer base of one — the Domtar pulp mill in Baileyville. “The port of Eastport has long been in partnership with a single customer,” he says. “We have always been tied to the successes and the market strengths and the operation of that mill.”
Gardner and Bradstreet both have high hopes for the operation, including having Maine maple syrup and other products join the cows on the ships. And Moreno’s kicking around the idea of more formally partnering with pulp producers to share boats and split freight costs. “It really is honest to goodness new business,” Gardner says. “It has the potential to change more than just our little corner of the world.”
But the work depends on a factor that’s largely outside Maine’s control. “It’s dependent on the preference of the shipping line,” says Armand Demers, director of materials handling for Sprague Energy, which operates Portland’s Merrill Marine Terminal. Eastport boasts the state’s deepest port and no waiting lines, while Portland’s closer to Roebuck’s farm in Turner. “It’s an opportunity for the state of Maine, not just an opportunity for Eastport,” Demers says.
Roebuck agrees. He wants the business to benefit Maine and he’s optimistic about its future, but the $14,000 bill he got for workers to load up the containers — more than the costs for grain — is tough to swallow. “We like Eastport,” he says. “We can’t afford to pay some of the prices they’re charging us.” Meanwhile, he’s handling a product that gets sick, dies and, in the case of cows that fail to pass the rigorous inspection process, have to be sold back into the domestic market. “It’s a lot of risk,” he says. “I have no desire to go to a casino. We gamble every day.”
Jackie Farwell, Mainebiz senior writer, can be reached at jfarwell@mainebiz.biz.
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