End of an era.

[Skinny rooster]

Last month the last dairy farmer around here quit milking. I just found out about it this week. I did wonder why I wasn't seeing the cows anymore. He is alone with small children and found it hard to get help. End of an era, I remember most people around here milked and either shipped milk or cream. I can't blame him, everyone around here is either older than me or dead, sad really. Now I can drive for one hour in any direction without seeing a dairy farm. I feel we will soon lose all the small family dairy farms.

[TomK]

Skinny...it truly is a sad situation and there's no easy or even possible solution...the root of it is money of course..and the whole thing about the milk production thing was screwed up right from the get go when they issued quota, which in itself was not a bad idea, but went off the rails when the quota became the main commodity on the dairy farm...when a farmer who had been issued milk quota at no cost at the outset retired, he should have had to return the quota to the system..instead, it was kept and sold to the highest bidder and it got stupid expensive and a part of the huge cost of owning the farm...so young people wanting in couldnt afford it...its not the whole thing of course, there are many other issues, such as no one wanting a 24/7 job never really leaving the farm...an accute business accumen, rising costs for everything and a supressed price for your product...and so on...but yeah, those days that we grew up in are gone gone gone...

[baronrenfrew]

there's another dozen reasons that fall in as well: tractors are far more complex and expensive to maintain (and now computerized and "dealer only" repairs). our 1960's John Deer has an "oil bath" air filter, the kubota a paper filter. Kubota filter = $100, John deere replacement oil = $5

small parts stores (and shops) are gone and you have to travel further to get parts

its against the law to save seed and replant (genetically altered patented seed) so you must buy seed every year
they get nickeled and dimed out of business

and on and on and on

[windwalkingwolf]

Ever-changing health and safety standards, and pressure from animal welfare groups, mean $$ upgrades to facilities, equipment, animal Care products including feed and medicine. If a load of milk must be dumped and farmer can't make quota, it's more $$ and not just in lost milk sales.
It's also a case of "he who has the gold makes the rules", and large scale farmers are often happily shooting the little guys and the start-ups in the foot.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/po ... le25124114

[KyleS]

As a dairy farmer the biggest challenge we have is staying large enough to float the big bills (feed, hydro, shavings/sawdust are our biggest bills) and it is next door to impossible to find good realiable help.

[muffin57]

This is so sad. I loved it when I could purchase fresh milk from local farmers and skim off the cream. It should still be my right to do so.

[baronrenfrew]

hydro? oh yeah, that bill must be painful!

[Killerbunny]

Thanks for the perspective @KyleS !

[gubi]

I'm a dairy farmer. To me the only reason a smaller farm can still survive is because we do have quota. Yes it's not perfect but much better then the alternative. In the US a small farm is now considered 200 cows! Walmart has now put up its own milk plant and they are only interested in buying milk from a farm that can provide a whole trailer load 30'000kg at a time! The smaller farms that used to produce that milk before got pink slips in the mail. We will no longer pick up your milk in 90 days and no one else is interested in buying it because they have way too much milk down there which has caused the collapse in milk price and farmers going broke. In Canada the government has one job which is to protect our borders, which they do a terrible job at and more and more US product is flooding in causing a drop in price up here too. Currently about a quarter of our milk is priced based on the world marked because we have to compete with subsidised imports! Another reason that is scaring some of the smaller producers and some that don't have anyone taking over is the constant threat to dismantle our supply management system. Some of them have decided to get out while they can and cash in on the quota. If it's not trade deals then it is political leaders fighting against us family farms. Interesting enough that even though dairy farmers are paid a fair price for the milk in Canada, the Canadian consumer gets dairy products for a better price then most consumers around the world where dairy farmers are not even getting paid enough to break even.

https://amp-realagriculture-com.cdn.amp ... -for-milk/

www Barrie McKenna and the glob and mail just hates us farmers. here are a few articles by Bruce Muirhead, he seems to understand S/M a little better then the Glob.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/bruce-muirhead/

This topic is very important to me as I want my kids to have a future as dairy farmers too. I have cousins in Switzerland still that after they got rid of quotas have now been reduced to hobbie farmers, meaning they still have to do all the work involved but now need a full time job to support the farm! It also worries me how some of my dairy farming friends in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are getting treated the same way!

[G Williams]

The other aspect of this trend is that people don't want to be tied to cows 24/7/365 days a year. I also wonder how many large farmers use minimum wage employees and Temporary Foreign workers. Thus being able to bid up the price of Quota and edging out new entrants and existing small farms.