CHINO, Calif. — Watching his 18-month-old grandson waddle past a herd of cows on the family's 80-acre dairy farm, Sybrand "Syp" Vander Dussen feels certain the boy, the youngest in a long line of dairymen, will one day follow in his footsteps.

The question is where.

For nearly 60 years, the Vander Dussens have milked cows in California. Suburban development edged them first from a farm near Los Angeles and is now squeezing them from land in once rural San Bernardino County.

The flight of dairies is nearly complete in Southern California, marking what could be a turning point in California's long-held dominance over the industry.

Soaring land prices and tough, new environmental regulations have many dairy families such as the Vander Dussens thinking about leaving the only state they've ever known -- where their parents and grandparents sought the American dream.

Caught in the grip of urban sprawl, Vander Dussen knows his options are limited.

"Dairies have gone from darlings to dogs within five years," he says. "Everyone attacks us, nobody wants us."

As a boy of 4, Vander Dussen arrived with his family in Southern California in 1947, fleeing World War II devastation in Europe. His father, raised on a dairy farm in Holland, turned to what was familiar -- first leasing land for a dairy and later purchasing seven acres in southeast Los Angeles.

As suburbs spread in the mid- to late 1960s and land values spiked, the family packed up and headed 35 miles east to a place they thought they could expand their dairy operation without fear of sprawl.

A fertile valley nestled below the San Gabriel Mountains, the Chino Basin straddling San Bernardino and Riverside counties was home to orchards and other crops and had the nation's largest concentration of cows per acre in the late '70s and early '80s.

When his father retired in 1969, Vander Dussen took over the family's property, now home to more than 6,000 cows. Amid his sea of Holsteins, Vander Dussen hardly notices the smell.

Now 63, he chuckles at the memory of his father thinking of the area as "Timbuktu."

There were once over 450 dairies in the area. Today that number is 150 and falling. Dairy remnants -- former buildings reduced to piles of broken concrete -- litter the area like cold graves as they wait to give way to tract homes.

The city of Chino, considered one of the most attractive areas in Southern California for developers, has a motto, "Where Everything Grows," but it no longer applies to farming.

Of the dairies still standing in the area, between 70 percent and 80 percent have been sold or are in escrow, according to Nathan deBoom of the Milk Producers Council. Some dairymen are being offered up to $550,000 an acre -- for land they may have purchased for $3,000 some 40 or 50 years ago.

At those prices, it's hard to say no.

Still, for those like the Vander Dussens who want to relocate, the future is uncertain.

The Central Valley is now home to most of the state's $5 billion dollar dairy industry. The eight-county stretch of fertile land in the middle of California has nearly 1.4 million cows at 1,500 dairies.

Twenty years ago, a move north would have been relatively easy. But dairymen point to a number of factors that in recent years made the Central Valley less attractive.

Groups like the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment have been active in holding dairies accountable for current conditions in the Central Valley, which has some of the most polluted air in the nation. Concerns center on cow emissions that are released into the atmosphere and react with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone.

The group, citing statistics showing 1 in 6 Central Valley children take an inhaler to school because of asthma, filed lawsuits seeking to compel new or expanding dairies to complete expensive environmental impact reports.

Dairies "were given a free pass to pollute, and they still have the attitude that the air is their toilet," says Brent Newell, staff attorney for the center.

The situation changed dramatically when a state law went into effect in 2004 requiring dairies to adhere to air pollution standards, just as commercial and industrial businesses do. They had previously been exempt.

A dozen permits are needed to operate a dairy in California, compared to one or two in states like Texas or New Mexico, says Michael Marsh with the Western United Dairymen.

"Folks would like to stay here in California," but many are moving out, Marsh says.

He adds: "It will mean a smaller industry. But it also means a loss of a significant number of jobs."

For now, the state Department of Food and Agriculture is not concerned. Milk production in California has steadily increased by 4 percent each year despite some farmers deciding to leave the state, according to department spokesman Steve Lyle.

Milking cows has been a way of life for the Vander Dussen family for longer than any one of them can remember.

At 14, Vander Dussen's son, Mark, was sent to breeding school to learn how to artificially inseminate cows. Now 39, he co-owns the family's farm. He's been preparing himself for the possibility of a move for some time.

"I'm not sad," the younger Vander Dussen says. "I think we'll be doing something somewhere. We're just not sure where."

His father breaks down a cost comparison:

The family would need to pay some $21 million to purchase 3,000 acres in the Central Valley, then an additional $15 million to construct the dairy. Selling their current land, which is in a future flood zone, would bring them only about $19 million, he says.

In Texas, however, the Vander Dussens could purchase land for $1,700 an acre and build a dairy for half the cost. The total price would be around $12 million.

The family will likely head east.

"The alternatives are too attractive," Syp Vander Dussen says.

An estimated 60 dairy families that have left the state in the past two years from the Chino area.

Tom Alger, a second-generation dairyman, is another one for whom Texas makes sense. "The cost of doing business is a lot less," he says. "We think we can make it there."

Dallam County lies in the northwest corner of Texas -- 60 miles long by 40 miles wide and home to about 6,000 residents. The number of large dairies is expected to more than double in the next few years as farmers flood the area from California, Wisconsin and elsewhere, according to Dallam County Judge David Field.

"We are just the ideal location," Field says. "There are very few people out here. It's wide open spaces."

The hope of many, including the Vander Dussens, is that it's just remote enough. But the move will be hard. Syp Vander Dussen likes California. The weather is perfect for raising cows, he says.

But the indifference he senses here is frustrating. Local hardware stores close, and mom-and-pop gas stations are forced out of business by chains that come with urban sprawl.

And the dairy business, Vander Dussen says, is "being permitted and lawsuited away. Nobody cares."

Source: Associated Press