Plant closures, dairy challenges bring together farmers, lawmakers in North Hero
Photo by Michael Frett, Islander Staff Writer.
NORTH HERO – Farmers from across Vermont met with lawmakers in North Hero earlier this month to discuss the state’s struggling dairy industry following the recently announced closure of several local processing plants and the continued loss of dairy farms in Vermont.
According to Rep. Michael Morgan, a Milton Republican whose district includes Grand Isle County, the Thursday forum was organized to allow farmers to meet with lawmakers about challenges facing the state’s dairy industry. While the event was originally planned as a forum for Grand Isle County farmers,
Morgan said interest quickly expanded to include farmers and lawmakers from elsewhere in Vermont.
“We’re here to talk about, in general, what’s going on in the dairy world,” Morgan said. “We recognize that family farms are essential to our economy and our landscape, and that they’re the backbone, the fiber, of what we see as Vermont.”
The forum in North Hero stemmed from Dairy Farmers of America’s announcement last month that they would idle their creamery in St. Albans by this coming August. The announced closure of the St. Albans creamery comes after other manufacturers revealed plans to close milk processing facilities in Barre, Enosburgh and Georgia.
One of those facilities, the Franklin Foods plant in Enosburg Falls, is now expected to reopen with a new operator this coming fall.
In all, recent and planned plant closures were expected to affect around 600 jobs in Vermont, with most of those affected jobs located in Franklin County.
“There’s been a lot going on over the last few weeks,” Anson Tebbetts, the state secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, said. “I think the news out of St. Albans probably brought a lot of us here today, but there’s a lot of issues statewide.”
The dairy industry is notoriously sensitive to shocks, with dairy farms often operating on tight margins and milk prices often swinging widely in response to changes in both national and international demand for milk. When an oversupply sinks prices, farms can be pressured into expanding their milk production to make up for lost revenue, resulting in a cycle that further increases milk supplies and drops prices.
In recent months, officials working in the dairy industry have suggested that other pressures, including strict environmental regulations and permitting requirements, as well as a tight labor market and rising energy costs, have added volatility to the dairy industry.
Many of those same concerns were listed by farmers participating in Thursday’s forum in North Hero. The most common complaints generally fell on Vermont’s comparatively tight regulations related to managing water quality and stormwater runoff, as well as a lengthy permitting process that could prove timely and cost-prohibitive for farms needing to either improve or expand facilities on their farm.
“We work hard to do what’s right for the environment, but if they think we’re going to collect all the water off of our driveways that isn’t clean, we can’t afford that,” argued Rep. Richard Nelson, an Orleans County Republican and dairy farmer from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. “Over in New York, they don’t have a problem with that.”
“They don’t feel welcome to farm and keep the working landscape,” Amanda St. Pierre, a Berkshire farmer and a representative from the Vermont Dairy Producers Alliance, added. “I do think maybe the bar’s been set too high and it’s too much of a competitive disadvantage.”
Those same concerns, according to some of those participating in Thursday’s forum, had likely pushed Dairy Farmers of America to idle their creamery in St. Albans. For close to a year, St. Albans residents living near the creamery have reported a sulfur-like smell stemming from the plant even after recent wastewater improvements were installed to reduce the risk for spreading odors, prompting the City of St. Albans to issue a public health order against Dairy Farmers of America in June.
In their statement announcing their plans to mothball the St. Albans creamery, Dairy Farmers of America did not reference their dispute with the City of St. Albans over wastewater issues and odors associated with the creamery and instead described the closure as “part of broader operational changes across [Dairy Farmers of America’s] network to support long-term value for our farmer-owners.”
During Thursday’s forum in North Hero, representatives from the nationwide cooperative cited national and international market conditions as the cooperative’s primary reason for mothballing the St. Albans creamery, referencing both flatlining milk production overseas and the recent expansion of creameries in New York and elsewhere in the United States.
“The idling of the St. Albans plant is just an example of changing dynamics in the milk market,” Tom Bellavance, an Alburgh dairy farmer who serves on Dairy Farmers of America’s board of directors, said. “We should embrace those changes, because those changes are going to bring a higher value and pump more money into our farms as milk checks.”
Representatives from Dairy Farmers of America also emphasized that the plant was only being idled and could be reactivated if the cooperative decided the creamery was needed.
“We may need it again,” Harold Howrigan, a member of Dairy Farmers of America’s board of directors and a farmer from Fairfield, said. “That’s why it’s ‘idled’ and not ‘closed.’”
Most of the regulatory pressures farmers challenged stemmed from Vermont’s commitment to reducing nutrient runoff affecting the Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River watersheds. Particularly in the Lake Champlain watershed, Vermont is required by the Environmental Protection Agency to dramatically reduce the amount of phosphorus runoff polluting Lake Champlain.
According to Vermont’s Dept. of Environmental Conservation, agriculture accounts for one of the largest sources of phosphorus pollution in the Lake Champlain watershed. The agricultural sector has also seen the largest reductions in phosphorus runoff in Vermont following the approval of the state’s Clean Water Act in 2015 and the widespread adoption of farming practices meant to control runoff pollution.
Phosphorus is a vital nutrient found in agricultural fertilizers. When excessive amounts of phosphorus collect in waterways like Lake Champlain, they can help nurture the sometimes toxic cyanobacteria blooms choking the lake’s shorelines every summer.
One person attending the North Hero forum questioned a suggestion from Dairy Farmers of America representatives that the state was not producing enough milk to keep up with processing capacity.
During the event, Dairy Farmers of America representatives had mentioned that supply and demand for milk products had become more “balanced” after recent shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic. The concern now, according to the Dairy Farmers of America representatives, was that New England risked ceding milk production to western states where production continued to increase.
“Over the past few years, I’ve seen milk prices that are not a lot higher or lower than they are today,” one speaker, who did not identify themselves, said. “Do we have a supply and demand problem, because, if we produce a lot more supply, aren’t we going to drop the prices?”
In response, representatives from the national cooperative said that the lack of a supply management program employed by other countries meant that American dairy farmers had little control over supply and demand for milk products and had to otherwise respond accordingly when shifting milk prices and demand for milk products pushed farmers to expand milk production.
“Supply and demand have always been the metrics for any business, but we don’t get paid in the United States to not produce milk,” Howrigan said. “We always have to make a little more every year.”
“What you’re seeing is production continuing to increase out in the Dakotas and in the West and in the Southwest,” Bellavance added. “Our goal should be that we don’t want to surrender our dairy industry to the western states.”
According to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, there were 480 active dairy farms in Vermont in 2024, a sharp decline from the 939 dairy farms operating in Vermont in 2013. Dairy farms in Vermont have grown larger, as well, with the average dairy farm now raising 254 cows compared to the 142 cows raised per farm in 2013.
As of 2024, there were eight dairy farms still operating in the Champlain Islands, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
The Thursday forum was held at the Bravo Zulu Lakeside Bar in North Hero.
