Edible San Diego E Edition Issue #51 Winter 2019

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS |
BY BETH DEMMON
Friends with Benefits
Frank and Rick
“M
y family has always been in the dairy business. It’s a...
different sort of business,” laughs Frank Konyn of
Frank Konyn Dairy. Established in 1962 by his father, Konyn’s
250-acre dairy farm is nestled on the San Pasqual Valley floor 35
miles northeast of downtown San Diego. With over 800 cows, he
estimates his monthly feed bill to be over a quarter of a million
dollars. As land costs increased alongside agricultural regulations,
Konyn realized that in order to survive, he’d have to diversify.
“In California, you’ll find the same thing among most dairymen.
It’s not a standalone business. Throughout the state, they
grow almonds and walnuts, own real estate, maybe they do hay
sales, etcetera. But for a standalone dairyman to survive is proving
to be very difficult,” he explains.
Even on farms, opportunities to turn wasteful liabilities into
profitable assets are hard to come by, but as Konyn searched for
a profitable new venture, he realized he was sitting on a veritable
gold mine—or more accurately, a brown one.
A dairy cow can eat over 100 pounds of food in a day and generates
over six yards of manure per year. Cow manure happens
to be very rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, making
it a perfect source for mixing rich compost for growing crops
or flowers. In 2007, Konyn launched the dairy’s sister company
San Pasqual Valley Soils to combine landscape trimmings with
manure in order to provide greenhouse gas-reducing compost
available for sale. It remains one of the only approved organic-use
composting sites in the county.
Rick Sarver, vice president of sales and operations at San
Pasqual Valley Soils, describes some of the unique challenges they
OLIVIA HAYO
32 ediblesandiego.com