TILLSONBURG — Kornelis Schaafsma sold off the family dairy farm in the Netherlands earlier this year. Now he’s searching for a replacement here in Ontario, and the pickings are slim.
There just aren’t very many dairy farms up for sale in the province, at any price. Nevermind that Schaafsma expects to pump the entire $5 million to $6 million he collected on the sale of his Dutch operation, plus take on substantial additional debt, in return for an Ontario farm with about half the production capacity of the one he left behind in Friesland.
He says he’s in the market for a 60- to 120-head milking operation — a family farm he and his wife Aafje can handle by themselves — with about 100 acres to support it. He estimates the cost of such an operation, including roughly 75 kg of milk quota, at between $7 million to $8 million in southwestern Ontario and perhaps $5.5 million in Eastern Ontario.
He previously milked between 140 and 150 cows at the farm where he grew up in Holland.
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