Storm could sour area dairy industry

The “Snowvember” storm managed what no other weather could accomplish at Silver Meadows Farm on West Lake Road.
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Back on Tuesday, the operation was forced to dump 1,200 gallons of milk, after a tanker wasn’t able to reach the location.

“We’ve in business since 1953 here, when my dad and my grandfather came here,” said Stan Klein, who co-owns the operation with his son Russell.

“This was the first load we lost to a weather event,” he continued. “Of all the other storms, the Blizzard of ’77 and the Blizzard of ’66, this is the first load of milk we had to dump down the drain because they weren’t able to get here.”

Silver Meadows was just one of the dairy farms affected after the storm threw the area’s distribution and transportation network into chaos.

It didn’t necessary matter if a farm was located where the lake effect hit hardest — some tankers were trapped on Route 400, while others couldn’t reach the processing facilities, or the farms themselves.

Numerous farms may have been forced to dump milk, although the effect is still hard to weigh.

“I can’t really tell you at this point,” said Paul Dziedzic, whose family owns Dziedzic Farms in Bliss. “I’ve got a meeting on Tuesday. I don’t know what the impact is going to be. I don’t think it’s huge.”

Besides their dairy farms, both Klein and Dziedzic serve on the board of directors of the Upstate Niagara Cooperative Inc., whose membership includes dairy farmers throughout Western New York.

Timing is crucial for milk shipments, since it’s a fresh product which needs to be processed quickly. The key factor is getting the milk to the processor.

Silver Meadows has a 1,500-gallon storage tank, and milks twice daily. When the tanker couldn’t arrive, it was forced to dump a day’s production.

Insurance is available to cover dumped milk, and area farms may have policies. But other variables will come into play, such as deductibles and how big the affected farmers’ claims are.

“You’ve got to weight all that stuff it’s a very hard call,” Klein said.

Dziedzic Farms has about 900 cows and experienced no losses.

“We only had four inches of snow until yesterday, and luckily our trucker, he was stranded for 24 hours, but he was able to get back the plant, unload, and get back to our farm, so that wasn’t a problem,” Dziedzic said. “But a lot of the trucks were stranded on the highway for three days.”

Upstate Niagara’s West Seneca and Buffalo plants reportedly canceled shifts due to the storm — and on the other end of the supply chain, it still isn’t known how much of a problem existed making deliveries to area stores and supermarkets.

In the meantime, the O-AT-KA Milk Products plant in Batavia reportedly experienced a veritable bumper crop of milk, as shipments from throughout the region were diverted to serve its product lines.

“A lot of our milk was going to Cuba, because they didn’t have snow in that direction,” Dziedzic said.

The farmers’ immediate concerns may not be always focused on the milk shipments regardless, as they work to preserve their barns in the snowed-in areas.

Jason Kehl, of the Kehl Dairy Farm in Strykersville, also serves on Upstate Niagara’s board of directors, alongside Klein as an executive committee member.

His operation didn’t need to dump any milk, but he spent all day Friday shoveling snow off his barn roof, which he believes is typical for the area.

Dziedzic noted the work the bigger farms face when clearing snow off large-sized bunker silos.

And Silver Meadows is building a new robotic milker facility, which will face some delays due to the weather, Klien said. Some supplies are stuck in Buffalo, and it isn’t good weather for construction.

Beyond any losses, there’s also the disappointment local farmers feel if they see their product go to waste — especially in an area renowned for its quality and production.

“It’s just a very sad day when you go through the process of producing the highest quality milk you can make, and you’ve got to let it go, because the weather won’t allow the distribution system to work, so it’s got to be disposed of,” Klein said.

The transportation situation appeared to be straightening out, he said, and Silver Meadows only experienced problems on Tuesday.

But Klein said you don’t realize how fragile the system can be, until something like this week’s major storm messes things up.

“The whole system has to move,” he said. “It has to be able to move that product out, because it’s a fresh product. Wherever it’s going, the roads have to be open.”

Source: The Daily News

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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