Taxpayer Funded Dairy Expansions?

It's interesting to note that the local communities and people living near large factory farms like that being considered by Schottler Dairy, Inc. have little to say in the decision process. Yet our tax dollars go into paying for government milk subsidies to these dairies. Remember, the bigger the dairy operation, the bigger the milk check.

The story below gives a brief discussion of the Dairy 2020 Initiative that takes tax dollars to give to dairy farmers so they can expand their operations to produce more milk and get bigger subsidy checks. This enables us to pay more in taxes. Meanwhile, these expanding dairies lower the property values of the people living in the surrounding area.

You don't have to live next to one of these factory farms to realize there is a terrible odor...

According to records provided in March by the Department of Commerce, of the nearly $1 billion Wisconsin dairy farmers spent to expand or update their facilities between 2003 and 2007, $22.4 million came from the state Dairy 2020 Initiative.

Dairy 2020 is designed to give dairy owners a financial incentive to modernize or expand their operations. Since 2002, 187 dairy farms received $20.3 million in low-interest loans to increase milk production through the Milk Volume Production program.

Read more at the Appleton Post-Crescent.