Mega-Dairy to Clear-cut 6,000 Acres of Forested Land

By: Ashley Weiss

           Golden Sands Dairy is planning to build a 6,000 acre dairy operation in the southeast portion of Saratoga in Wood County, Wisconsin. These 6,000 acres are in a significant portion of Plum Creek’s 7,000 heavily forested acres. The little rural Town of Saratoga and its residents are completely against the plan.  After Golden Sands Dairy applied for a permit to build this operation, the building inspector said they had filled out the wrong application for the permit and had them fill out another application that was identical to the one before, just having a different title. The next day the town had put a building moratorium (a hold on the operation) in place. A week after the building moratorium was set in place, Golden Sands Dairy had received notice there was a moratorium on new building permits applied to the dairy project. Golden Sands then filed the civil action against the building inspector and the town officials. As of right now, this is a battle going on in the courts.

            In my opinion, I am definitely on the side of the Town of Saratoga. Factory farms are just unethical to me. Golden Sands plans on having a total of 5,300 animals. This is a confined operation we are talking about. The treatment of these animals in situations just like this one is wrong. Not only that, but where is all of the manure and other waste going to go? This will threaten the water quality of the water table and of the nearby Wisconsin River and Petenwell Lake, which leads into Castle Rock Lake that is already in rough shape with its high levels of blue-green algae. In order for them to build this mega-dairy operation, they have to clear-cut 6,000 acres of heavily forested land. That’s a ridiculous amount of land to clear-cut, and for what?

            I have my personal reasons as to why I don’t like mega-dairy operations. Growing up on a small dairy farm with only 50 milking cows, my family and I got to see the take-over of mega-dairy operations within our own county. Milk prices are and were so low that a small farmer can’t afford to pay the bills. Look deeper into the reason why the milk prices are low; too much milk on the market. It’s the simple concept of supply and demand. The more milk on the market, the lower the prices get. The reason why there is too much milk on the market can be blamed on a number of issues, but one big issue is mega-dairy operations. They are too big to fail, so when they need to get bailed out, they are bailed out by the banks. The banks have too much money put into these mega-dairy operations to let them fail. That is why it always comes down to the “almighty dollar.” The small farmers just get left in the dust.