[AT] Dairy farming. Dying industry?

[Greg Hass]

I can remember when locally we had 5 small bottling plants, a place that 
made butter, and a place that made cottage cheese and ice cream. Basically, 
they were all run out of business by the state of Michigan. Most of this 
started in the 60'S and just got worse as time went on. One bottling plant 
was just a mile from us and next to the country school that I attended 
(this school is still operating to this day and has about 25 or 30 
students) When I went to this school, if they were late delivering milk a 
couple of us would take the milk crate of bottles  over and get it filled 
with new ones, either white or chocolate in half pint bottles. When they 
closed the bottling plant, which was located on the farm, they said the 
cost of all the new permits and rules was so high that they could make just 
as much selling their milk off farm just as other farmers did. The other 
places had the same story. Now our area must also ship the milk over 100 
miles to be processed and then hauled back to our stores. The other thing 
that has been hurting the smaller dairy farmer in our area is that the 
Dutch people are coming in and building big operations that have several 
thousand cows on about 40 acres. What angers our local people is that for 
some reason they can get all kinds of tax breaks that our own people cannot 
get. Also coffee shop talk has it  that 2 or 3 of them have been busted for 
hiring illegals to milk the cows. We have about 6 or 7 of these operations 
in our county. I do know that a couple of years ago they bought out an 1100 
cow operation that was locally owned, and within 3 weeks of owning it the 
Dutch fired all the local employes and replaced them with Mexicans (I don't 
know if these were legal or not). Times are changing, but I'm not so sure 
it is for the good. P.S. These operations have been causing a lot of 
trouble with so many animals and so much manure in such a small area.
Greg Hass