Down in Orange County, the last dairy cows in New Windsor went up on the auction block Friday. The Times Herald-Record was there to record another step in the long death march of New York State dairy farming:
The result has been the closing of 207 dairy farms in Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties between the years 1987 and 2007. The trend has also hurt feed and equipment stores, farmers said.
"People don't understand there's a multiplier effect when these family farms close down," said Mark Hoyt, a dairy farmer from Montgomery.
It's also the end of a decades-old lifestyle for people like the Baxters. Waking up at first light, milking twice a day, pulling in the harvest — it's all done.
As Harold lingered in the barn and ignored the auction, he reassured visiting dairy farmers that he's doing the right thing. But his son, Ryan, sensed the sadness as cows were loaded into trailers.
"I don't think he wants to see his girls go," he said.
Brutal milk prices may be driving dairy farmers under, but we still need milk. 150 miles away, in South Edmeston, Otsego County, the factory that makes Chobani yogurt is expanding quickly, and practically begging local dairy farmers to increase their herds. The Daily Star attended a grip-and-grin session this week at the Agro-Farma facility:
At Thursday's ground-breaking ceremony for a 150,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse, Agro-Farma President Hamdi Ulukaya called on local dairy farmers to consider increasing the size of their herds.
"We're going to be here as long as we can get the milk we need," he told about 130 guests, including Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica; state Sen. James Seward, R-Milford; and Assemblyman Clifford Crouch, R-Guilford.
Ulukaya said that by the end of the year, the plant will be going through 25 million pounds of milk a week.
According to the USDA, the average cow produces about 1800 pounds of milk a week. By our rough envelope math, that means it will take almost 14,000 local milking "girls" to keep Chobani in business.
Photo of cows by Flickr user James Jordan, published under Creative Commons license.
