Surviving The Decline Of The New Hampshire Dairy Industry

A lot of dairy farmers are born into the business. But Jamie Robinson calls his path "the old fashioned way." He married into it. Roberston and his wife, Heather, are the fourth generation to work Bohanan Farm in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Their children are already planning to follow suit. But over the years, there have been plenty of opportunities to get out of the business if they wanted to.

"You know," Roberston says, giving a nearby cow an absentminded pat, "when you’ve been in Southern New England, your farm’s been worth a lot for a long time, and if you didn’t want to sell it for houses and go work at another job, and you stayed milking cows, you’re a pretty serious dairy farmer."

Choosing to stick with family farm is a much tougher decision today. The global milk market is a complicated thing, but the bottom line is that milk from European farms has been flooding the U.S market, and driving prices down. Meanwhile, the regional drought has been driving feed prices up. This means New England dairy farmers are in a tight bind.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: New Hampshire Public Radio