Andy Hatch has watched dairy farms disappear around him. About 15 years ago, 15,000 dairy farms had 1.2 million cows in Wisconsin. Today, only about 6,500 dairy farms milk the same number of cows, an extreme consolidation that has wreaked havoc on communities and the economy.
“Our towns are being depopulated, schools are closing,” said Hatch, a co-owner of Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. And the cheese producers, too, are closing. He spoke about a neighboring commodity cheese facility that was purchased, immediately shuttered and relocated to Canada. There, production costs are more affordable.
“Economically, the trajectory we are on does not look sustainable,” said Hatch. “There is not enough industry to employ people. There is not a new form of agriculture that has replaced dairy farming.”
It seems an inauspicious time to take over a cheese business, as Hatch and his co-owners did when they bought a 100-year-old dairy farm in 2014. But there’s a deep irony at work here. Even with a gutted dairy sector and financial precarity, American artisanal cheese has never been so prolific, creative and delicious. Crisis may be the mother of creativity. “American cheese” is no longer the notorious orange, plastic-wrapped “cheese product”. Making cheese as a “value-added” milk product brings farmers more income and sometimes “foodie” adoration, but it’s also an opportunity to develop sustainability models in a dairy industry that’s historically been extremely polluting.
“Sustainability begins with economic viability. You need to be economically sustainable to make the right kind of choices around environment,” said Mateo Kehler, founder and CEO at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Vermont.
Kehler witnessed similar devastation in Vermont as its iconic red barns crumbled. Running a small dairy farm became less and less feasible. “It’s terrifying to watch farms going out of business – an apocalypse playing out in slow motion,”…
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