[AT] Dairy farming. Dying industry?

[CEE VILL]

I am glad to see Greg mention tax breaks.  That is the first thought that 
entered my mind as I read about the other two new Dutch owned operations 
previously mentioned, but I had no evidence of it.

A large national pet store chain opened several stores plus a call center in 
our area ten years ago.  Due to creating new jobs, they were given 
substantial tax breaks as an incentive.  Now the ten years are up and they 
will have to play on a level playing field with locally owned stores.  No 
big surprise that the national chain is starting to close down stores and 
leave the area.  It is a pretty good guess they found greener grass 
elsewhere.

Charlie V.


>From: Greg Hass <gkhass at avci.net>
>Reply-To: Antique tractor email discussion group 
><at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
>To: Antique tractor email discussion group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
>Subject: Re: [AT] Dairy farming. Dying industry?
>Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 01:58:47 -0500
>
>
>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
>
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