A recent article in the Aberdeen American's Farm Forum, Marshall Dairy boosts Veblen area economy, included this snippet:
The dairy has about 19,000 head, mostly Jersey cows and some Holstein cows. While the milk cows are housed in a huge area that has a constant 5 mph breeze, a room kept at 80 degrees is for the newborn calves. After a day, the calves are transported to Moore Calves calf ranch near Hancock, Minn. After a few more days, the calves then travel to New Mexico and Arizona, where they receive specialized care until they have their first calf — and return to the dairy as milk cows.
Follow those calves to the Southwest. As we read it, they become part of the water issue explored in detail in Draining Arizona: Residents say corporate mega-farms are drying up their wells:
. . .Over-pumping of groundwater has been a problem across rural Arizona for generations. Historically, as groundwater levels inched lower, wells like Reynolds’ went dry here and there.
But in certain areas, the groundwater is dropping faster than it has in decades, driven by a recent influx of corporate farms that are placing intense stress on the aquifer, experts say.
That’s set off a battle for water in this dry region, pitting some longtime residents and family farmers against big corporations. In this competition for a scarce natural resource, those who can afford to drill the deepest wells are the ones who get the water, while those who can’t are forced to abandon their property.
Near Willcox, there’s no surface water whatsoever, so homes, cities and farms all rely on pumping water from the aquifer. The cheap land here, paired with a four-season growing year and lax laws regulating water pumping, have drawn multiple major corporate farms to the area in the last 20 years, where they’ve competed with residents and existing farms for groundwater.
The largest of these industrial transplants is Riverview LLP, a dairy and beef conglomerate headquartered in Morris, Minnesota, which began buying land in Cochise County in 2014. Such large operations need to pump significant amounts of water to hydrate their cows and grow food for them.
To ensure a constant stream of water, these farms have drilled deeper than wells in previous decades. Whereas 20 years ago, wells averaged about 270 feet, Riverview has drilled dozens of its wells deeper than 1,000 feet, according to the state’s well registry. Of the 92 wells drilled that deep in the Willcox Basin since 2015, 60 of them are Riverview’s. In that time, no other company drilled more than five, according to the registry.
These deeper wells that companies have drilled over the past several decades have essentially undercut existing well owners and pushed the entire water table down, 200 to 300 feet below 1950s levels, said Jeff Inwood, chief hydrologist at the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
. . . Arizona’s groundwater law largely does not apply to rural areas like Willcox, which means that land is particularly attractive to large farms. Companies can pump as much water as they want; they don’t even have to monitor how much they use.
The lax water regulations have drawn an influx of corporate farms, including pecan growers such as Chase Farms and the National Pecan Company. But in the Willcox area, the new arrival that has alarmed some residents the most in recent years has been Riverview, particularly as the full scope of its plans came into view.
In 2012, Cochise County loosened its agricultural permitting regulations, making it easier to set up large cattle farms. Riverview arrived shortly afterward, in December 2014, and went on a land-buying spree.
Riverview’s first purchase was an 8,000-cow dairy farm for $38 million. Since then, the company has bought at least 166 parcels of land in 59 separate transactions totalling at least $129 million, according to property records reviewed by NBC News. Riverview now owns 20,000 acres of farmland in Cochise County, according to the company.
In some cases, Riverview formed holding companies to execute the land deals. In February 2015, for example, Riverview CEO Gary Fehr set up a limited liability partnership called Mountain Vista Farms with a local farming family, and they purchased a $7.7 million property together. Mountain Vista Farms had the same corporate address as Riverview, and once the land was purchased, ownership was transferred to Riverview in December 2017, according to property and partnership public records. . . .
As Riverview grew, it drilled deeper wells on its new properties, and nearby residents began noticing their shallower wells drying up, six residents told NBC News. (The state does not comprehensively track reports of wells drying up, Inwood said.) That pattern, combined with what residents described as Riverview’s above-market offers for land purchases, left some holdouts feeling they had only one option — sell.
“The longer you stay, the less money you're probably likely to get,” said one resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job and being ostracized if he criticized Riverview. “And they’re going to get it anyway,” he added of the company’s appetite for land. “Everything that they've done, they've done in mass amounts and with such speed and vigor that it's like a freight train.”
A battle over water regulation
As the water table drops, industrial operations like Riverview are forced to drill deeper in search of guaranteed water. The Willcox Basin sports 7,453 wells, according to the state well registry. Of those, only 368 are deeper than 900 feet — and Riverview owns 102 of them. The cost to drill a hole that deep can easily surpass $500,000, local drilling companies told NBC News.
Read the whole report at NBC News.
Riverview Dairy
It's fascinating to see Riverview Dairy called a corporate farm in the national media. We began to pay attention to the LLP (the structure allows the operation to slip under Minnesota's corporate farm law) in posts such as MN12A: Does Backer want to strip citizens of ability to ask MPCA for environmental studies?.
Indeed, that's exactly what Riverview, Backer and their pals were after--and got--in eliminating the Citizens Board of the MPCA, as MPR's Elizabeth Dunbar reported in MN lawmakers pull the plug on pollution-fighting citizens' panel.
Ironically, the Dunbar piece is illustrated with a photo of Thief River Falls' Excel Dairy; the caption notes:
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's Citizens' Board has weighed in on many agriculture decisions over the years, including the Excel Dairy case, in which the board denied to reissue the Thief River Falls dairy a permit after it was declared a public health nuisance.
In Dairy operation to reopen, the Jamestown Sun reported:
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Citizen's Board today in St. Paul will hear the case to allow Excel Dairy, a rural Thief River Falls mega-dairy, to once again fill its barns and produce milk.
The dairy has been closed and empty of cows since January 2009, when the state filed air quality regulation violations against the dairy and its parent company, the Dairy Dozen. Earlier this month, Excel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but plans to re-open as soon as possible, said company owner/manager Rick Milner. . . .
Millner is one of several investors of a dairy farm conglomerate based in Veblen, S.D., that has had six dairy operations in recent years in South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota. Environmental violations connected to manure pits have occurred at the two farms near Veblen in recent years, as well as the Five-Star Dairy near Milnor, N.D.
Five-Star also filed for Chapter 11 protection in federal bankruptcy court earlier this month, but remains in operation.
One of the Veblen dairy farms also filed Chapter 11 this month, Millner said.
The company's other dairy farm near Veblen was placed into receivership earlier this year in the hands of a Minnesota agricultural lender, according to news reports.
The chronology can be found in 2011's Dairy drama: A timeline at AgWeek, which includes the acquisition of the Veblen dairy by Riverview. It's as if there's a circle here.
Riverview also starred in our post, From Land Stewardship Project: U economist says help is disservice to many dairy farmers:
Rural Communities & Family Farming Under Attack
Here is an example of how corporate interests and big ag are working against rural communities and family farmers at the legislature. On Feb. 26, the Senate Ag Policy and Finance Committees met for a special joint hearing to overview the state of agriculture in Minnesota.
Dr. Marin Bozic, a dairy economist at the University of Minnesota, testified “on behalf of Minnesota Milk, and as well as [his] employer,” the U of M. Incredibly, Dr. Bozic said, “I anticipate out of 3,000 dairy farms left in the state, probably over 80 percent are last generation dairies… We are going to see a number of dairy farmers that are no longer competitive… We would be doing them a disservice by offering some handouts that would prolong their hope but really there is nothing there to hope for.” He then lifted up Riverview Dairy, an 8,000-cow dairy in Morris, Minn., as the prime example of what type of operation our state resources should be focused on. (Watch or listen to his testimony, which starts at 1:06:15.)
That's from the Land Stewardship Project. It's curious to read over a year later when dairy farmers are struggling. Who knows that a dairy economist at the University of Minnesota and Minnesota Milk, said such things?
And who knew that Arizona's groundwater was being sent to giant dairies in Minnesota and South Dakota in the concentrated form of heifers? My, my.
Photo: A holding pen for cattle at Coronado Dairy, one of the cattle-growing farms operated by Riverview LLP.Andrew Stern / NBC News.
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