DaytonDailyNews.com

Van Erk's plan to escape restrictions of homeland

By Don Melvin
Dayton Daily News

ZEEWOLDE, Netherlands | Jaap van Erk and his wife, Alma, have a book that shows where their future lies. Sometimes they take it out and look at it when they are thinking about the days to come.

The book is an atlas. And their future lies in Ohio.

In February, if all goes according to plan, van Erk, 33, and his 30-year-old wife, will pack up their two young sons and move to the farm they bought near Defiance in Paulding County. There, they hope to enjoy advantages unavailable to dairy farmers in crowded, industrial Europe — the chance to expand, freedom from burdensome regulations, and the respect accorded those who do important work.

The van Erks are by no means alone in their American dream. Scores of dairy farmers in the Netherlands and Germany, frustrated by constraints on growth, are considering moving. In some cases they may leave behind land their family has farmed for hundreds of years.

During the last four years, Vreba-Hoff Dairy Development, a company that helps farmers relocate from Europe to the United States, has moved more than 30 farmers, the vast majority of them from the Netherlands, to Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. All have established new operations with more than 600 cows.

Most of them seek, above all, opportunity.

"To grow on the farm, it's not possible here," van Erk said.

But it is possible in the American Midwest, where land is cheaper and more plentiful, barns are less expensive to build and there are no milk quotas to purchase.

So van Erk has sold the farm his father established 18 years ago on land newly reclaimed from the sea, where he had 260 cows, 125 of them giving milk. In Paulding, he will start a farm with 699 cows — one under the number that would require him to get a state permit.

"The family says, 'No, don't do it. We will miss you,' " he said. "But it's our future."

Farming seems to hold little promise in this part of Europe.

"The biggest problem for the future in the Netherlands is being in a country where you have 80 percent too much of the product that you make," said Alex van Bakel, one of the partners in Vreba-Hoff.

That surplus means farmers are required to buy milk quotas in order to produce. It's a one-time expense, but a hefty one for a farmer striving to expand, amounting to as much as $15,000 per cow.

Van Erk puts the cost of expansion — buying the milk quota, building barn space and acquiring land — at $35,000 per cow. Others estimate it at closer to $45,000.

For van Erk to expand by 500 cows or so, as he will do when he moves to Ohio, would cost anywhere from $17 million to $22 million if he stayed in the Netherlands.

The cost in Ohio is estimated at $6,500 per cow — less than a fifth as much.

European dairy farmers also complain about what they see as excessive regulation. They are required to keep very detailed records, and the paperwork confines them to the office two days a week on farms that, almost uniformly, are operated single-handedly.

Mistakes in the record keeping can, at least in theory, cost them the right to deliver their milk to the factory — the ultimate penalty for a dairy farmer.

And they fear that the European Union will add more bureaucracy on top of that imposed by their national governments.

Their objection to excessive regulations, farmers in Europe said, does not mean that they object to protecting the environment. On the contrary, they contend that they have a long history of respect for the land. Their cows need clean water to produce quality milk; to pollute the water, they said, would be to cut their own throats.

Many of them are aware of Anton Pohlmann, the German farmer whose Buckeye Egg Farm has run afoul of Ohio's environmental laws. Given the experience with Buckeye Egg, they said, Midwesterners are understandably concerned about European farmers relocating to the United States.

"I could understand this fear," said Jan-Hinnerk Morisse, a 25-year-old German dairy farmer who is considering relocating to the States. "I saw the pictures from the Pohlmann farm. But that's not my sense of how to do farming."

"Pohlmann was a criminal," Morisse's father, Martin, cut in. "He was a bad man."

Vreba-Hoff officials, too, are aware that some Ohioans are convinced that megafarms in general despoil the environment.

"So we've got to prove them wrong," said Andries Haveman, who works for Vreba-Hoff. "We know we're being watched."

The company said it tries to relocate only "environmentally conscious dairy producers."

Van Erk runs a government-certified "biological" farm, meaning he uses no chemicals. A windmill near his barn provides his electricity. But he, too, understands that his new neighbors could be worried.

He said that's one reason he plans to start his operation under the 700-cow limit that would require a state permit. Applying for a state permit while still living overseas would be difficult, Vreba-Hoff officials said. And neighbors, fearing the unknown, would be more likely to raise objections to a large farm run by someone they had never met.

Van Erk plans to hold open houses, once he is established, so that his neighbors can see how he runs his farm and ease their fears. "They can come see you don't let your manure into the ditch," he said.

He plans to expand and to obtain the necessary permit when he passes the 700-cow trigger. Vreba-Hoff officials said the farms they build all start with manure management plans that will meet state requirements once expansion makes a permit necessary.

Van Erk believes that people in Paulding County will come to see him as a contributing member of the community. As with almost all farmers moved to the states by Vreba-Hoff, he has signed a five-year agreement with a local crop farmer, to their mutual benefit. The crop farmer will get the manure from van Erk's dairy farm to fertilize his fields. Van Erk will have more fields on which to spread his manure. And the majority of the feed for his cows will come from the local farmer in the form of alfalfa, corn and other crops.

Farmers in Europe said that other people in their homeland look down on them, seeing them only as producers of manure who inconveniently drive tractors down the roads. Farmers are not held in high esteem.

"When you are going out, you don't say, 'I am a farmer,' " Alma van Erk said.

But a visit to the Paulding County Fair in July convinced her and her husband that the same is not the case in America. "The people we were speaking to said, 'It's quite an impressive job,' " van Erk recalled.

The van Erks look forward to growth, greater prosperity and the chance to hire some help, spend a little more time with their sons, and even get away from the farm for a vacation now and then.

Still, they did not take lightly the decision to move.

Van Erk also scouted areas in Germany and Denmark. Even after deciding that the United States offered the best opportunity, he said he would not move if his wife objected.

But the Ohio landscape reminded her of the Netherlands. She checked the schools and the community and thought that this was the place she wanted to live.

Besides, she said, she saw her husband's face as he drove through Ohio looking at all the big farm buildings, the likes of which are rarely seen in the Netherlands.

"His eyes were glowing," she said. "And I thought: We are going."

[From the Dayton Daily News: 12.06.2002]