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Steven A Judge
Member since Feb 23, 2017
Recent Comments
Re: “Unlikely Allies Seek to Make Vermont's Milk the Cream of the Industry”
These guys are a little late to the game on this. I started a farmer owned milk company and a brand of fluid milk called Vermont Family Farms back in the 1990s. The State of Vermont and the coops did everything they could to put us out of business because we dared to stand up to the dairy establishment and market a premium, BST free milk produced exclusively by sustainable Vermont dairy farms. Our farmer owners had tough standards for milk quality and land and animal care and they were paid substantially more for their milk. Annual sales of our milk had surpassed $1,000,000 dollars by 2000 when the farmer owners decided to sell the brand of milk which was eventually purchased and driven into the ground by HP Hood.
Posted by
Steven A Judge
on 02/23/2017 at 2:54 PM
Re: “Big Ag Sale: Is There a Market for a $23 Million Vermont Dairy Farm?”
Richardson is wrong about CAFOs (which is what the Dubois farm is supporting the local economy. Studies have shown that they actually hurt local economies because a CAFOs buying power insures they buy supplies and commodities from the cheapest possible sources which are usually found outside the community the CAFO is located in. I farmed in Addison and Windsor Counties in Vermont since 1988. I worked with the Vermont Land Trust to place a conservation easement on my 300 acre farm in Shoreham that we sold in 1997. Since then I have tried to work on several projects involving smaller community dairy farms in Vermont and found VLT to be stubbornly focused on the benefits of big dairy in Vermont and surprisingly reluctant to support smaller, community based dairy farms unless they are contiguous to larger conserved farms. I think they are under the influence of the Dairy industry, politicians and bureaucrats who want to make sure that the regions milk processors and dairy food manufacturers enjoy an endless supply of cheap commodity grade milk at the expense of Vermont's communities, environment and the farmers who go broke producing that cheap commodity grade milk. Too bad, because CAFOs are not the future of Vermont's dairy industry.