Dairy meeting in Cobleskill yesterday (and no, we couldn't go, having to keep up with keeping up).
I hope all this legislative attention to what is truly becoming a widespread disaster comes in time to help our neighbors and us too. After talking to our lender, feed company reps, milk company officials and other farmers in recent weeks we are beginning to see that this situation is unprecedented. We are fortunate in some ways, not being as deeply in debt as is often the case. Still, we are facing decisions we don't want to make if something doesn't change and soon
Farms are going to go out of business. Lots of them. Soon. Here in upstate NY they are the backbone of the economy, perhaps the last viable industry before the area becomes a great big housing development, providing a nice place for commuters from the cities to live.
CWT keeps dumping thousands of cows into the beef market, keeping prices depressed so you can't even sell a few extras to pay your school taxes. I am really glad to hear that some legislators are looking into solutions, even short term ones.
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This has been so ongoing...I wish they would stop talking and typing and DO something. I'm so sorry.
I wish there was something we could all do to help.
What's he tellin' us/you that for? He needs to get the message across to his colleagues!
It's all horribly scary. New York State seems dead set against New Yorkers.
Teri, exactly right. So many solutions...all on paper. None of them are going to do anybody any good if none of them are implemented.
Dani, it is sweet of you to even think of it. Thank you
June, Precisely! I am grateful that they are talking and meeting and all but it is getting past time for some doing.
Mrs. M, you have it exactly and at the rate they are going a lot of NY is going to be just plain dead.
Until the economy took a downturn lots of farmers around here 'sold-out'! One of the biggest reasons the orchard people sold was because of the imports coming in from China and South America. They just couldn't keep up. It cost more to grow and harvest our fruit than it did to bring in imports. Ours tasted better, but they were available year round. People wanted year round apples, cherries, watermelon.
They the requirements to get the fruit onto the market became so 'hard' it was just too expenisve to continue with the debt load that the enocomony imposed.
My parents and grandparents sold out, finally. My grandparents retired, but my parents lost thier place to forclosure. It was horrible. Terrible. I can't explain it enough.
Yes, it finally turned out okay, Daddy got a good job, but they had to move away.
Still the family's 200 acres of fruit is no more, just subdivisions and Mac Mansions.
My heart is with you, it really is!
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
Thanks, Linda, it must have been so hard for your family to go through that. I don't know what will happen here or with thousands of other farms some of which are worse off than we are....it is just a day to day thing now.
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