How Now, Brown Cow?

We had a decent mid-sized local dairy co-operative, Crystal, that recently was acquired by East Coast based HP Hood LLC -- in what amounts to yet another lost local business that kept local farmers and distributors employed, provided a product to local consumers, and kept tax revenues supporting local needs.

I fully admit my embracing of the 'evil corporations' doctrine even though I'm not exactly sure of why it's so evil. I don't yet have the vocabulary to describe it. However, my gut feeling tells me a few things:

1) Hood's operations are based outside Boston, MA. Regional issues now have to compete against the larger interests of a global Hood. Perhaps it's now cheaper to move operations out of state and ship the products in.
2) I assume there are certain lost revenues for local taxing authorities.
3) Centralized large, industrial-scale manufacturers require significantly more 'public' resources to support than would a local producer/consumer chain. Freeways, diesel, pollution...
4) Local secondary dairy products are now lost against big volume, fewer-choice, cheaper priced products manufactured elsewhere.

I am not certain of the issues regarding how small, regional players fare against large, industrial scale providers/manufacturers. But this 120-cow farmer south of Elk Grove is now no longer a 'preferred' provider to Hood's new Sacramento operations, along with several other small, independent farmers. He now has to shop his milk elsewhere, to Fresno, to massive cheese factories in San Joaquin valley, and in some cases out of state. All in the face of $4 diesel.

What this will do, it appears, is force the consolidation of milkers into similar large scale, industrial operations -- if it isn't happening already. With it, comes more demand for infrastructure that is becoming increasingly more expensive.

Agriculture will be a word we will revisit. The culture was derived through hundreds of generations of people who preceded us. Yet within two generations, agriconsolidation has destroyed the collective wisdom of these previous generations and we now have no collective ability to produce locally as we will likely have to do once again, when in my opinion, we face energy scarcity that will force us to re-localize.