SKANEATELES, N.Y. (AP) — Farmer Jeremy Brown taps the nose of a young calf. “I love the ones with the pink noses,” he says.

This pink-nosed animal is just one of about 3,200 cattle at Twin Birch Dairy in Skaneateles, N.Y. In Brown’s eyes, the cows on the farm aren’t just workers: “They’re the boss, they’re the queen of the barn.”

Brown, a co-owner at Twin Birch, is outspoken on the importance of sustainability in his operation. The average dairy cow emits as much as 265 pounds of methane each year. Brown says Twin Birch has worked hard to cut its emissions through a number of choices.

“Ruminants are the solution, not the problem, to climate change,” he said.

Wearing a weathered hoodie and a hat promoting a brand of cow medicine, Brown was spending a recent windy morning artificially inseminating some of the farm’s massive Jerseys and Holsteins. He stepped over an electric manure scraper used to clean the animals’ barn.

The electric scraper means the dairy doesn’t have to use a fuel-burning machine for that particular job. Twin Birch also recycles manure for use on crops, cools its milk with water that gets recirculated for cows to drink and grows most of its own feed.

Despite all that, the farm has no desire to pursue a U.S. Department of Agriculture organic certification, Brown said.

Doing so would add costs and require the farm to forego technology that makes the dairy business, and ultimately the customer’s jug of milk, more affordable, he said.

He raises a question many farmers have been asking: Is organic farming just a word?

An increasing number of American farmers think so. America’s certified organic acreage fell almost 11 percent between 2019 and 2021.

Numerous farmers who implement sustainable practices told The Associated Press that they have stayed away from the certification because it’s costly, doesn’t do enough to combat climate change and appears to be losing cachet in the marketplace.

Converting an existing farm from conventional to organic agriculture can cost tens of thousands of dollars and add labor costs.

The rules governing the National Organic Program were published in 2000 and, in the years after, organic farming boomed to eventually reach more than 5 million acres, but that has been declining in recent years.

Any downward trend is significant, as organic farms make up less than 1 percent of the country’s total acreage. Organic sales are typically only a tiny share of the nationwide total.

Shannon Ratcliff, a farmer and co-owner of organically certified Shannon Brook Farms in Watkins Glen, N.Y., attributes the decline to a 2018 fraud case in Iowa involving a farmer selling grain mislabeled as certified organic.

“The whole thing went crazy — work requirements for farmers ramped up and inspection levels were higher,” she said.

It’s also just a tough business, Ratcliff said.

Her co-owner, Walter Adam, also thinks younger generations’ interest in farming of any kind is also declining.

“It takes six months to learn everything,” Adam said. “We can’t find anybody as willing to work on the farm.”

Adam drives to Manhattan each week to sell their meat and eggs at markets, and spends Sunday mornings helping Ratcliff with business at the Brighton Farmers Market in Brighton, N.Y.

Frank Mitloehner, a professor in animal science in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at University of California Davis, said a lack of flexibility and efficiency are driving farmers away from organic in an era of rising prices for farmers.

He said organic standards need to be overhauled or the marketplace risks organic going away completely.