LA CRESCENT, Minn. — For more than 130 years, Richard Johnson’s family has farmed. Now that legacy is threatened by the glut of milk in the market.
Johnson said his family’s dairy operation, Pine Creek Farms, is one of about a dozen Minnesota dairies and several dozen Wisconsin farms that have received notice from Grassland Dairy Products of Greenland, Wis., that will be dropped by the company at the end of the month. According to the letter he received from Grassland, the butter and industrial dairy ingredients company was cutting production due to a loss of exports to Canada, the result of a pricing structure change that increased the costs of importing U.S. dairy goods.
Johnson’s grandfather settled near La Crescent in 1887, and his father took over the farm in 1935. He has been in the dairy business since 1979 and today milks 125 mostly Holstein cows with the help of his three sons and produces nearly 10,000 pounds of milk each day.
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