by Tena Starr
TROY — Jacques Royer has been a dairy farmer all his life, but those days are now numbered. After many long conversations and some tears, his wife, Roberta, said, the couple has decided it’s time to move on. The economics of small or mid-sized dairy farming don’t work no matter how hard you try, they said.
This story isn’t new. Vermont has been losing farmers at quite a clip for some time. What’s new is that the latest crisis in dairy involves organic farmers, who were, for a while, somewhat shielded from the grim economics of dairy.
The Royers, who are among the state’s diminishing organic dairies, put their Troy farm up for sale in November and plan to sell the cows sometime in the spring. They could keep going, they said, but they don’t see the point what with the cost of production continuing to outpace the price they get for milk…
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