DaytonDailyNews.com

Foreigners pulling up roots and migrating to America in droves

By Ben Sutherly, Mike Wagner and Laura A. Bischoff
Dayton Daily News

CONVOY | Jan-Hinnerk Morisse listened to lively exchanges in German, Dutch and English as camera-toting farmers sipped soft drinks and munched cookies in the big dairy's break room.

Old World farmers are coming to America — again.

Morisse traveled more than 4,000 miles from his farm near Wersabe, Germany, to learn more about large-scale dairies in the Midwest. After a weeklong tour of farms in August, he was poised to join dozens of other foreign farmers who have built large dairies in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

"I only have my parents. It’s a good moment to sell," said the 25-year-old Morisse, who owns a dairy with his father in Germany. "In Germany, you have to get permission for everything."

Vreba-Hoff Dairy Development LLC arranged for Morisse and 15 other German farmers to visit dairies recently built by Dutch immigrants. The Michigan-based company began importing Dutch farmers in 1998, and now is luring dairy farmers throughout Europe.

Henk and Helma Arts, who built their dairy with Vreba-Hoff's help and moved their family from the Netherlands two years ago, patiently answered the Germans' questions, explaining how they contract with local farmers for grain and hay for their 699-cow herd and communicate with their Spanish-speaking employees.

"The biggest reason for us to leave the Netherlands is it's very hard to expand," Helma told the German tour group in English. "It's a small country. Their regulations, they are hard to follow over there."

Besides, she said, "Our son really wants to become a farmer."

Drawn by affordable land, less restrictive environmental regulations and seemingly boundless opportunities to expand, European farmers are pulling up roots and migrating to America in droves. Already, 28 large dairies have opened in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan; 11 more are under construction or about to break ground. Vreba-Hoff officials expect to relocate 20 more farmers to the United States in the next two years.

Vreba-Hoff has helped relocate more Dutch farmers to Ohio than any other state. Some say Ohio reminds them of home, but that's not the only reason so many are choosing to come here. Nearly three times the size of the Netherlands, Ohio has fewer people.

Building barns in America is less expensive. There are no milk quotas here limiting expansion. And Dutch farmers who come to the Midwest leave behind some of the world's toughest environmental regulations.

Home to 14 million hogs, 108 million chickens, 4.2 million cattle and 1.4 million sheep, the Netherlands has one of the highest concentrations of livestock in the world — so high that Dutch policy mandates reducing the pig population by 10 percent. Livestock farmers are banned from applying manure in autumn and winter, and from putting manure on frozen ground. They also must inject their manure into the soil and follow strict requirements for ammonia emissions.

Land in the tiny European nation of 16,033 square miles can sell for as much as $20,000 an acre. That gives farmers a big incentive to head for the Midwest, where an acre of productive farmland can still be had for $2,000 to $3,000.

Overseas, Dutch farmers sell their government-issued milk quotas in a way similar to the reselling of liquor licenses in the United States. They can earn $800,000 to $900,000 by selling a milk quota for 50 cows, providing dairymen with a nice down payment to set up a larger farm in America.

But the infusion of Dutch farmers in the Midwest has some regulators concerned.

Virtually all the Ohio dairies are built to house just under 700 cows. The state requires farms with 700 milk cows to get a permit, which opens them to inspections and forces operators to have a written plan for handling manure.

Environmentalists also believe the Vreba-Hoff dairies intentionally kept their farms below 700 cows until the Ohio Department of Agriculture in August assumed authority of the megafarm permitting program from the state’s Environmental Protection Agency.

At least five Dutch dairies in Ohio have received environmental violation notices from the Ohio EPA, primarily for manure spills into creeks and storm water runoff. The Arts dairy was cited for polluting a creek and killing 8,000 snails in December 2001.

"We have not been happy with how they've operated," said Christopher Jones, director of the Ohio EPA. "We've started to do a number of inspections on them and seen some consistent problems."

On Wednesday, the Ohio Environmental Council sent a letter to Gov. Bob Taft asking him to halt construction on new Dutch dairies until all current Vreba-Hoff farms comply with the state's environmental laws. The council also wants the dairies to apply for federal pollution permits, which would place the farms under more scrutiny from regulators.

"We are aware that factory farm problems are not restricted to just the Dutch dairies," wrote Susan Studer-King, outreach coordinator for the council. But she said the Vreba-Hoff dairies warrant extra scrutiny because they were constructed "to circumvent state regulations."

Environmentalists in Michigan have also attacked large dairies, saying they're not committed to protecting local waterways. Janet Kauffman, a member of the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, noted that big dairies have invested millions of dollars in equipment.

"If they can put that kind of money into protecting the milk, why can’t they put that kind of money into protecting the streams and ditches?" Kauffman said. "They call it a state-of-the-art manure handling system, but it’s not. It’s put-it-in-a-pit and spray it on fields."

For now, Vreba-Hoff dairy farms are just shy of being classified as megafarms. But nearly all of them have begun to expand — or are expected to expand — to more than 1,000 cows. The Arts dairy has built a new barn as it prepares to expand its herd to 2,000 cows.

Helma Arts said the dairy's environmental problems have been solved. "We are watched very, very carefully," she said. "One of the reasons we do so many tours is so people see how clean and nice it is. And the cows are happy. It's not really a factory — the cows are happy here."

Vreba-Hoff officials acknowledged some of their dairies have had problems with manure runoff, but they said the violations were isolated incidents and have been addressed. Like many big farm operations, Vreba-Hoff supports having the agriculture department run the state's permitting program.

"We have a good relationship with the Department of Agriculture," said Cecilia Conway, a member of the Vander Hoff family that founded the Vreba-Hoff company.

Conway said the agriculture department's regulations are tougher than the EPA's.

"All of our farmers realize how much scrutiny that they’re under, and they’ve tried very, very hard to operate them well," she said.

Inside a Dutch dairy
The hostas, marigolds and bikes in front of the Arts dairy may be reminiscent of the Netherlands, but the scale of the dairy operation behind the milking parlor's brick fa�ade is thoroughly American.

Three times a day, six Latino employees milk 600 cows. The cows generate enough milk each day to fill a 6,000-gallon milk tanker truck. The family's break-even milk price: $12 for every 100 pounds. Every dollar above that generates an additional $230 of profit per cow per year.

Between milkings, cows lounge in free stalls bedded with sand under 14 large fans and nearly an acre of roof. A mechanical pulley system keeps the aisles behind the stalls free of manure, scraping it to the center of the barn. From there, the manure is flushed down a trough into a lagoon that holds up to 2 million gallons of liquid.

A tractor pulls a wagon capable of holding 1,050 cubic feet of feed down the center of the 365-foot-long barn. Holsteins stick their necks through stanchions and devour the feed as the wagon deposits it in rows.

The Arts family is building a 20,000-square-foot barn as they prepare to expand their herd to 2,000 head. They’ve also put enough feed in storage for their growing herd. Helma Arts said the family this year packed away 3,000 tons of uncured hay and 8,000 tons of corn silage, in addition to the 2,500 tons of silage the family already had in storage.

The scope of the Ohio operation dwarfs the farm in the Netherlands where Henk and his father once had seven cows. But with millions of dollars invested in buildings and equipment, he said the new dairy is hardly the culmination of the American dream.

"It isn't a dream," he said. "It's a big risk."

One-Stop Shopping
To set up dairies in the Midwest, all European farmers need to do is dial up Vreba-Hoff's office in a strip mall in Wauseon, near the Michigan border. That, and see their banker.

For a fee, Vreba-Hoff scouts the land, builds the barns, buys the cows and equipment, lines up grain farmers to supply feed and land to spread manure, and provides technical advice. It also helps families navigate immigration, get Social Security numbers and deal with other relocation issues.

"It makes it a lot easier to go through Vreba-Hoff," Helma said.

On average, the cows, buildings, equipment and fees run about $2.5 million — excluding the land price.

The catalyst behind the migration of foreign dairy farmers is a family-owned company with roots in the Netherlands.

The Vander Hoff family runs Vreba-Hoff's two big dairies in Michigan, a leasing organization and its development arm. Four brothers, two sisters and three cousins — two in the Netherlands and one in the United States — own the company's holdings.

Stephen Vander Hoff immigrated to America in 1960, and worked as a farm hand and truck driver before buying a small dairy in Holland, Mich. The family went large-scale when it built its first big dairy — Vreba-Hoff I — near Hudson, Mich., in 1998. They spent $14 million to build Vreba-Hoff II, an identical dairy down the road, in 2001.

Both dairies are designed for 3,000 cows and are high-tech, using transponders on the cow collars that relay milking information on each cow to a computer database; a chill system cools the milk from 101 to 36 degrees in two minutes.

Each farm generates 16 million to 18 million gallons of manure per year, which is spread on 5,000 to 6,000 acres nearby, said Stephen Vander Hoff, the elder Vander Hoff's son and the manager of Vreba-Hoff II. Each farm produces 18,000 to 19,000 gallons of milk a day, putting the farms among Michigan's top 10 dairies, he said.

Such huge operations draw attention. Vander Hoff said 3,000 people attended an open house for Vreba-Hoff I, and groups are constantly calling to set up tours.

"I’m proud to be a farmer. I’m proud of what I’m doing," he said. "There’s nothing better than waking up every day and loving what you’re doing."

While Vreba Hoff I was under construction, family members saw an opportunity to build dairies for immigrating Dutch farmers. They started Vreba-Hoff Dairy Development LLC in 1998 and began recruiting clients. The company works closely with Willy Van Bakel, a cousin and a real estate broker in the Netherlands who also sells milk quotas. Van Bakel tells Dutch dairymen looking to move about Vreba-Hoff Dairy Development.

The courting began slowly, but now Vreba-Hoff has a steady stream of potential clients. Conway said the company conducts tours three times a year, each one with about 15 couples. The clients fly into Detroit or Chicago, tour farms in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, hear from milk marketers and feed organizations, and get a pitch in both English and Dutch from Vreba-Hoff staff before returning home.

Vreba-Hoff isn’t the only company looking to bring Dutch farmers to America. Real estate representatives from Michigan, Wisconsin and Washington attended an annual trade show in the Netherlands, and South Dakota is recruiting Dutch dairymen, Conway said.

She said Vreba-Hoff hopes to eventually build a dairy on the 5,000 acres it purchased outside of Columbus — land that had been proposed for the Darby Wildlife Refuge.

Conway doesn’t believe Dutch families have come to the United States because environmental regulations are less strict than those in their home country. Most Dutch dairy farmers just want a chance to be competitive, make a good living for their children and continue milking their cows, she said.

"This is what they know how to do, and they want to keep on doing it," she said. "So they are looking for opportunities outside their home country, and most of the farmers who we’ve built farms for have looked at other countries prior to coming to the U.S."

No Welcome Sign
The land is brown and flat in every direction, divided only by the dusty County Road C that weaves around the drought-stricken fields.

This is home, and almost heaven, to Jeroen and JosŽ Van Wezel.

Three years ago, the Dutch dairy farmers spent more than $15,000 traveling to France, Sweden and Canada in search of a new place to milk cows. But it wasn’t until they made one last trip that the couple decided to move their three young children to Ohio’s Putnam County from a tiny village in Holland, near the Belgium border.

"I know people here think this is the middle of nowhere, but after one day here and seeing all the land that wouldn’t cost us everything . . . we knew this was home," said JosŽ. "We are dairy farmers. Our parents were dairy farmers. Their parents were dairy farmers. It’s who we are, what we do and it’s what we will always be."

The Van Wezels' move to the United States is typical of foreign livestock farmers spread throughout Ohio’s countryside. They left family behind. They spent $1 million for an investment visa. They borrowed millions more to start up their dairy. They began running a farm 10 times bigger than what they used to manage. And they weren’t welcomed by neighbors.

With help from Vreba-Hoff, the Van Wezels arrived in America in February 2000. They trained, worked and lived near Vreba-Hoff’s operations in southern Michigan for about 18 months before opening their own 650-cow dairy farm late last year.

But while the Van Wezels, both in their early 30s, were making plans to build the dairy, their neighbors were making their own plans to kick the Dutch couple out of the neighborhood.

Led by Kathy and Dave Burkhart, neighbors in the tiny farming community of Miller City formed the Citizens of Putnam County for Clean Air & Water Inc. specifically to combat the Van Wezel farm.

The group collected more than 100 signatures on a protest letter sent to the Van Wezels. When that didn’t work, the group, along with another citizens group opposing a separate Vreba-Hoff farm, filed a motion in federal court asking a judge to halt construction.

The judge dismissed the request, but that group hasn't gone away.

"We felt it would adversely impact the quality of our lives, pose threats to our water, the air we breathe and our home values," said Kathy Burkhart. "That’s all proven to be true. That farm turned neighbor against neighbor. We used to be a tight-knit community — now we are on two sides."

The Van Wezels said an overwhelming majority of their neighbors have accepted and befriended their family. They said a small group of only six people, including the Burkharts, continue to protest the dairy.

"I think people need to realize that most farmers are real good environmental stewards," JosŽ said.

The Van Wezels have been under scrutiny by the Ohio EPA. On July 12 and July 13, they injected roughly 360,000 gallons of liquid manure into a 36-acre field. An estimated 3,000 gallons of manure spilled into a ditch, which runs into a nearby tributary.

The spill affected a three-quarter-mile length of the ditch, according to the Ohio EPA. Jeroen Van Wezel called the EPA on Sunday, July 14 at about 8 a.m., a half-hour after he discovered the spill.

The Van Wezels said the spill was due primarily to dry weather. Cracks in the soil developed, allowing manure to filter into the crevices and then the ditch.

"We are sorry the spill happened, but we did exactly what we were supposed to to clean it up," Jeroen said. "This is my home now, too. Why would we not want to keep it clean?"

From importer to exporter
While Dutch dairies are locating and expanding in America, some farm experts believe the United States will eventually become an exporter of farmers as land, labor, buildings and equipment become more expensive and regulations become more strict.

"Large animal production will move out of the country," said David Zartman, an animal sciences professor at Ohio State University. And with it, he predicted, will go the U.S. grain and feed industries.

Phil Warnken, founder of a Missouri-based business that promotes agricultural investments in Brazil, said opportunities there are nearly limitless.

"In the case of Brazil, it does not have the environmental controls that the U.S. has," said Warnken, president and CEO of AgBrazil. "Many producers look at that. Brazil does not have anything in place that's going to slow down livestock production as far as environmental controls. Right now, almost anything goes — within reason."

Once Brazil has slaughter houses and other infrastructure in place, livestock and poultry producers will move in quickly, Warnken predicted. A broiler slaughterhouse recently opened in the Brazilian state of Bahia, where Warnken relocates clients.

Warnken said Brazil provides cheap corn and soybeans, and labor costs are much lower than in the United States.

"We are going to be contacting some of the Dutch dairy producers because the opportunities there for milk production are just outstanding," he said. "There's just simply no question that that's where livestock's going to go."

Zartman said some of his colleagues argue that American consumers would never give up their food security, but he's not convinced.

"We'll import more of our food as long as they (consumers) think somebody inspected it," he said. "As long as it's cheap."

[From the Dayton Daily News: 12.06.2002]