There’s more than one way to eliminate the small raw milk dairies.  There is a war on raw milk, but those attacking raw milk don’t always carry guns.  The costs of producing safe raw milk were just too high for Holly and Steve Atkinson of Greenwood Farms, Missouri.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the Atkinsons made their final delivery of raw milk last week.   Even though they had very good sales and their customers were willing to pay as much as $10 a gallon, they were unable to keep up with the costs of feed, fuel to deliver the milk, production equipment, and labor. 

The Post-Dispatch article reports that Holly Atkinson said they would have had to increase, maybe double, the size of their dairy herd to survive financially, and they did not believe they could have continued to produce safe milk with a larger dairy.  It would have been too much like the factory dairies.  As I posted earlier this week[See 5th Annual Farm and Food Leadership Conference, San Antonio], Ramy Jisha, owner of a small Texas raw milk dairy, recommends a herd size of no more than 100 cows.  “Too many cows cause the process to become too impersonal., knowing the cows personally one-on-one allows the farmer to notice problems before they become serious. ” The Texas certified dairy owner spoke last week at the Farm and Food Leadership Conference in San Antonio.

I don’t know how the regulations for raw milk dairies differ between Missouri and Texas, but I wonder if that could happen here.  Additional costly, burdensome requirements are continuously being proposed by regulatory agencies, encouraged by large agri-business corporations who can readily afford the extra time and paperwork.  When will the costs be just too much for our farmers too?  When will the costs squeeze the Texas certified raw milk dairies out of business?