Bansen keynote speaker at Organic Farming Conference
Jon Bansen, along with his wife Juli, own Double J Jerseys Inc., a certified organic Jersey cow dairy operation in Monmouth, Oregon.
Jon Bansen will be the keynote speaker at the fifth annual Organic Farming Conference at the Event Center in Mt. Hope on Nov. 7 and 8. He will open the conference on Thursday morning with “Planning on Healthy Soils.”
Bansen, along with his wife Juli, own Double J Jerseys Inc., a certified organic Jersey cow dairy operation in Monmouth, Oregon. They currently milk 160 Jerseys on their farm and market their milk as part of the Organic Valley Cooperative.
The Bansens are committed to soil health and pasture-focused production and have passed this way of thinking on to their four children, Ross, Christine, Allison and Kaj, who all grew up working on the dairy.
Bansen is a fourth-generation Jersey dairy farmer, and many of his siblings and cousins also are in the industry. One brother owns his grandfather’s dairy in Northern California, and another has taken over their father’s farm in Yamhill, Oregon.
Bansen has roots in dairy farming that trace back to his great-grandfather, who emigrated from Denmark in the late 1800s, settling in a community of Danes in Northern California. His grandfather followed in the early 1900s, hiring out his milking skills to other farmers until he saved enough to buy his own small farm near the coastal town of Ferndale in Humboldt County.
Bansen was about 10 years old when his father and their family left the home farm to strike out on their own in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. They bought land in the tiny town of Yamhill, about an hour southwest of Portland.
A typical farm boy, Bansen and his seven siblings were all expected to help with the chores. “You fed calves before you went to school, and you came home and dinked around the house eating for a while until you heard Dad’s voice beller at you that it was time to get back to work,” Bansen said.
After studying biology in college in Nebraska and getting married soon after graduating, Bansen and his wife worked on his dad’s Yamhill farm for five years and then began talking about getting a place of their own.
They found property not far away, outside the town of Monmouth. It had the nutritionally rich, green pastures Bansen knew were ideal for dairy cows, fed by the coastal mists that drift over the Coast Range from the nearby Pacific Ocean.
Jon and Juli Bansen started their own dairy, Double J Jerseys, in 1991. After being approached by Organic Valley, Bansen transitioned to organic in 2000.
In 2017 the Bansens switched to full-time grass feed for their herd of 160 cows and 150 heifers. Their 100 percent grass-fed milk is sold under Organic Valley’s “Grassmilk” brand.
Bansen’s decision to take his cows off grain completely has meant doing something very different than what the other farmers around him do, even some of those in his own co-op.
His participation in Organic Valley’s grassmilk program is just a progression of what he calls “the organic thing.” He gets paid a little more for his milk, but it’s not the road to riches, in part because his cows don’t produce as much milk as when their feed was supplemented with grain, and he’s had to add more land in order to grow enough to feed them.
Bansen’s motivated by the desire to produce the most nutrient-dense milk possible, and he believes 100 percent grass-fed milk is where the market is going.
“The fat profile in grassmilk is much more beneficial to human health,” he said. “I want to be where the consumers are; that’s always a good thing. As our agriculture has moved away from pasture, the balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids has shifted, leading most of us to consume much more omega-6. Severalstudies have linked that shift to increases in everything from heart disease, to cancer, to autoimmune diseases. The key is producing high-quality forage that is efficient to milk cows on."
Bansen said he attempts to keep as close to self-sustaining as possible.
They milk the cows twice a day in a parlor that accommodates six. He estimates it takes about three hours. While he is aware it’s not the most highly efficient parlor, he said it works well for his needs.
“It kind of means everything. You can pass on your knowledge,” Bansen said. “That’s the tragedy in farming nowadays: A lot of farmers who spend their life understanding animals and soils, and the children don’t want to come back; it just dies with them. It’s pretty important that we have people who understand how to grow such good food.”
Progress and continuing education are important to Bansen, and it’s his favorite part of being a dairy farmer.
“It’s a big playground,” he said. “The conventional world is tied into producing bigger, faster stuff. I get to boil it down to what really works in the natural system. What can I add in to work better and how can I make the system stronger biologically? As we built that soil system, we’ve seen the financial end of our farm get stronger too.”