Two dairy farms planned for eastern North Dakota would more than quadruple the number of dairy cows in North Dakota and provide a dramatic shift to the livestock industry in a state that has fallen behind its neighbors in animal agriculture.

Riverview Dairy, based in Morris, Minnesota, hopes to build a 25,000-cow dairy farm southeast of Hillsboro in Traill County and a 12,500-head dairy north of Wahpeton in Richland County.

The Traill County dairy would create about 100 jobs and the Richland Dairy 45 to 50 jobs, Riverview officials said.

Riverview held an open house Tuesday in Halstad, Minnesota, the closest community to the proposed Traill County dairy, to provide information and answer questions. It has not held a similar event for the Richland County project.

Traill is an estimated $180 million project and Richland at $90 million.

Jim Murphy of the Traill County Economic Development Commission called it a “once-in-a-lifetime event for any community.”

Randy Paulsrud is a neighbor who rents the land. He said at first he wasn’t happy about losing a section of land that he farms for a dairy but now is interested in selling feed to the dairy and buying manure to fertilize other nearby fields.

“I’m on board with it,” Paulsrud said. He said he toured Riverview’s dairy near Gary, Minnesota, and came away impressed, with no concern about odor from covered manure pits.

“Oh man, it was clean,” he said.

Leslie Viker, who owns the Herberg Township land near Hillsboro where Riverview plans to build, said she plans to continue to live near the dairy after it’s built.

“I think this is going to be great,” she said.

Martha Koehl, Riverview spokesperson, said the cows will be kept in climate-controlled barns and milking machines will operate 22 hours a day, with the other two hours for cleaning.

Koehl said the projects are contingent on Riverview finding a market for the milk they produce. She could not offer a definitive timeline for when construction and operations might begin.

North Dakota’s dairy industry has been dwindling for decades, shrinking to about 10,000 dairy cows and just 24 dairy farms.

North Dakota state Rep. Dawson Holle, R-Mandan, who operates one of North Dakota’s larger dairy farms, said he has mixed feelings about the mega-dairy.

“I’m very concerned when it is a corporate farm that is coming in, not a family farm,” said Holle, who operates an 1,100-cow dairy farm.

Riverview is technically not a corporation, but is a limited liability partnership. It has built other large dairy farms in Minnesota and also has plans for one at DeSmet, South Dakota.

Loosening North Dakota’s restrictions on corporate farm ownership for livestock operations was one of the goals for Gov. Doug Burgum going into the 2023 legislative session.

The Legislature passed a bill that made it easier to bring in outside capital in modern livestock operations that have become major investments.

North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said Riverview’s business structure would have allowed it to operate in the state even without the changes. But he added the bill sent a message that the state is receptive to livestock projects.

Holle was among those who voted against the corporate farm changes. Rep. Mike Beltz, R-Hillsboro, voted in favor and gave some credit to the changes for bringing the dairy to his home district.

The Legislature also passed a bill to support infrastructure projects related to agribusiness development. Beltz said that could be tapped to help pay for improving the 1-mile road that would connect the Traill County dairy to North Dakota Highway 200 and possibly for utility work.

“There’s some opportunities for some infrastructure work around the site,” Beltz said.

The Traill dairy will be called Herberg Dairy for Herberg Township and is planned just south of North Dakota Highway 200 near the Red River, about 7 miles east of Interstate 29.

The Richland site would be in Abercrombie Township and called Abercrombie Dairy, about 7 miles north of Wahpeton. Riverview has already applied for a permit with the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality for that project.

Todd Leake of Grand Forks County questioned whether state regulators are equipped to enforce environmental regulations for concentrated animal feeding operations.

Amber Wood, executive director of the North Dakota Livestock Alliance, has been working to stimulate animal agriculture in the state.

She said she expects the growth in the dairy industry to continue to be along the Interstate 29 corridor, where there is better access to milk processing and livestock feed.

Ethanol plants, sugar beet processing plants and new soybean crushing plants at Casselton and Jamestown all provide byproducts that can be used to feed livestock.

American Crystal Sugar has a beet plant at Hillsboro. Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative has its only beet processing plant at Wahpeton.

“Cattle absolutely love beet pulp,” Wood said.

Koehl said beet pulp and soybean could be part of the feed ration that will be primarily corn and alfalfa hay.

A state Agriculture Department map of dairy farms shows none operating in Traill County and one in Richland.

Morton County, home to the iconic “Salem Sue” dairy cow statue along Interstate 94 west of Bismarck, is down to just four dairy farms, including Holle’s.

While North Dakota’s dairy industry has been shrinking for decades, the situation turned even more dire in 2023 when Prairie Farms Dairy closed its milk processing operation in Bismarck.

Holle said that is forcing him and others to send milk to a cheese plant in Pollock, South Dakota, nearly 90 miles south of Bismarck.

Holle said milk used for cheese production has a lower price than fluid milk and the extra freight cuts into profits.

“A lot of the dairy farmers are crunching the numbers and wondering what their future is,” Holle said.

North Dakota has fallen far behind neighboring states in the livestock sector and especially in dairy.

South Dakota put an emphasis on animal agriculture under Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who served from 2011 to 2019, and its dairy cow numbers rebounded. South Dakota went from 96,000 dairy cows in 2000 to 187,000 in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Holle said the North Dakota Department of Agriculture hasn’t done enough to support dairy farming.

“They can say that they’re doing a lot for farmers in North Dakota, which they are, but they’re not doing a lot for animal ag in North Dakota,” Holle said.

“There isn’t a lot that we can do,” Goehring said. “I mean, short of the Legislature wanting to do something more like build a processing facility, but I don’t see that happening either.”

He said the department can try to address some issues, “but it’s a difficult challenge.”

A key resource for large dairies is water supply, needing 28 to 30 gallons of water per cow each day, Koehl said. That would equal at least 700,000 gallons of water per day for the Traill County site and 350,000 gallons per day for the Richland site.

Koehl said the Riverview farms squeeze the liquid out of the manure, which can be piped to farm fields for fertilizer. The solids from the manure are dried and used for animal bedding.

Koehl said the Traill dairy would fill 22 tanker loads of milk at about 7,900 gallons per tanker – more than 170,000 gallons per day.

Beltz said he was impressed by a tour of a Riverview dairy in Minnesota.

“You wouldn’t know you were standing on a site with that many animals,” Beltz said. “They’ve been here for a while. They know how to do it right.”

This story first appeared in North Dakota Monitor, a sibling site of the Minnesota Reformer and part of States Newsroom.