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As someone who lived in a small city in the American Mountain West, the boom does have consequences. Sleepy farming towns are becoming endless suburbia, hiking

As someone who lived in a small city in the American Mountain West, the boom does have consequences. Sleepy farming towns are becoming endless suburbia, hiking up prices as developers spill over from the Lehi 'Silicon Slopes' area. Midway, for instance, a town on the Wasatch back situated in a location that feels similar to Switzerland, has gone from about 150 diaries to 2, as expanding housing developments buy out the high-valued farmland. You'd think with the influx of money, and reduction in competition, it'd be easier for the remaining diaries to compete. Not so: the price of milk has remained basically unchanged since the 70s, but the cost required to run a farm has kept increasing. So why not cash out? (A few farmers in the area have actually cashed out and moved to Idaho, and they're pretty much set for life.) Long story short, Midway is a beautiful place to live, and the remaining diaries form a pillar of the community - it's just not something the remaining diary owners, who have been farming the land for generations, want to do. To stay in business, the remaining diaries have pivoted to artisan cheese production, with plans to produce other high-valued products, like ice-cream. Tours and locally-sourced farm stores are an additional source of income. Of course, these are just my own two cents. I don't mean to come off overly negative about the situation. As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. Source: I'm a software engineer who lived/worked as a cheese-maker for a dairy there.

big_youth 6y ago
Great post but one point, Whole foods sells 1/2 gallons for $6! I don't drink much milk but would gladly pay a premium for high quality, local, organic milk.
- isaacimagine 6y ago
  Thanks for raising that point! The dairy I worked at does sell high quality local raw milk; they have a pasteurizer to produce cheese, but they can't use the same one to produce pasteurized milk. Additionally, the cows usually produce an excess volume of milk, which is sold so it doesn't go to waste: it's important to remember that even if the milk is sold for, say, $6 at Whole Foods, not all of the markup goes to the farmer.
- sadfev 6y ago
  Depends on the brand, good organic milk is worth it. Bare minimum is Whole Foods 365 brand In New England Organic Valley is as good as it gets for store milk, https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/dairy/ https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/dairy/
- driverdan 6y ago
  Organic is a scam and Whole Foods is a rip off. Please explain what "premium" milk is. Milk is a commodity. All milk has a code on the bottle that indicates which farm produced it. If you compare codes you'll often find the cheaper store brands are the same thing as the more expensive brands.
bane 6y ago
It's not unusual for businesses to move up the value chain when their segment commoditizes. Dairies are actually a couple steps up the chain from the farmers who grow feed or hay. Cheese, ice cream, etc. are next up. In some places it's grass to baskets to warehousing to shipping. In others it's grass to sheep to wool to textiles to fashion. Still others it's trees to lumber to paper to stationary. Other industries have their own moves. In areas that can't manage this move up tend to see the local industries consolidate until some final monster exists and either also eventually fails too (to external competition) or rent seeks its way to a zombified existence. There's other alternatives to when vertical value growth isn't possible -- like in developing countries, the businesses all coexist together, but tend to price each other into nearly unsupportable levels. Strong regulations tend to kill this alternative off leaving an up or out path one of the few viable ones available.
wwweston 6y ago
> As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. It's already arguably happened; fruit orchards and irrigation turns were big part of the milieu in Orem/Provo a few decades back, and they're all but absent now, and in general the Wasatch Front has taken a dramatic turn away from agriculture in the last 30 years. It's easy to imagine the metro areas like the Bay and Los Angeles like they've always been that way, especially if you're younger than the internet. But if you look at early/mid-century maps or pictures you realize that there was still a great deal of open space and agriculture mixed in. It doesn't take a genius to realize similar changes are coming along regions like the I-15 corridor. California problems follow California popularity.
- dendrite9 6y ago
  I assume you know about the orchards of Silicon Valley? It's an interesting bit of history to me. I didn't realize the same thing was happening along the Wasatch Front, but it makes sense. E: forgot the link https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/the-last-of-his-kind-farming-fruit-in-the-silicon-valley/ https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/the-last-of-his-kind-f...
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    And the orchards of Orange County, California.
  - wwweston 6y ago
    Great article! I knew that orchards were part of SV's ag history, but I didn't know about Andy's and that'd be fun to visit.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The problem is the money firehose. Getting rich steadily is fine. Getting rich quickly because of outside factors is what provides perverse incentives, room for bad things to hide and screws everything up. Using fat paychecks to lay waste to small towns is one of the few things tech yuppie and oil pipeline workers have in common. Best (i.e. least worst) case scenario you end up as a rich people playground like Tahoe or Cape Cod where everyone without a conscience runs a business skimming easy money off the wealthy (or becomes a plumber and does it with an extra abstraction), everyone with ambition leaves and everyone else winds up with a substance abuse problem. Worst case the money leaves for good and you wind up like coal country.
arethuza 6y ago
Looks like a autocorrect problem there - "diaries" for "dairies" - took me a while to work this out and was busy researching what a diary was in this kind of context... :-)
- isaacimagine 6y ago
  Typed out on a phone, can't go back and edit it now ;P
giantg2 6y ago
You can always move to mountain towns in Appalachia. The population has been stagnate or shrinking over the past decades with the mills and mines shutting down.
- watchdogtimer 6y ago
  Same with rural communities here in the Midwest. We would love to have FAANG refugees move here.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    YMMV on this one. In my part of the midwest, home and land prices have almost doubled in the last year, and went up about 6x since we built our house (about 8 years ago). Two reasons: (What used to be called) Yuppies moving out here and working remotely to 'get more in touch with nature' (read: start a blog or something about sustainable living that is really only possible if one of you has a 100k+ salary) and investors from out of the area are purchasing land as an investment. Both of these things drive the cost WAY out of the range of what is (a) reasonable, or (b) attainable. I'm over the whole thing. In an area where the median family income is around 55k/year, anyone that makes double that as a single individual can live like a king. Consequence: none of us that live here can afford the increase in taxes, home values, or property values anymore.
    - ramphastidae 6y ago
      This is the pure definition of NIMBYism. You built a house there eight years ago that has increased 6x in value. Now others are trying to do the same thing and you demonize them for it. You should be complaining about state policy, not the people seeking a better life for themselves.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        What state policy would address these issues? It's possible he's a local. That could also mean he didn't move there with a 2x salary. So it's not really the same thing. While there's nothing wrong with people moving for a better life, there's also nothing wrong with someone lamenting fundamental changes in their community that they see as detrimental.
refurb 6y ago
I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. This is why housing prices in the Bay are so stupid. People don’t want it to lose it’s magic and their solution is to freeze practically all building. As a result, even the people there are forced out due to growing rents, increasing housing prices force kids to leave, commercial rents replace tattoo shops with skin spas. And you lose the magic anyways.
bluGill 6y ago
Dairies are consolidating because scale factors make the big ones more competitive than small ones. Though with modern shipping taking milk from the middle of nowhere makes sense.
specialist 6y ago
My family's farms were replaced by starter castles. I sort of understand the economic and social forces. It still makes me incredibly sad. (I can't even drive past my family's former lands.) Sprawl is evil. Big Ag is evil. More recently, some local farmers worked with local government and businesses to figure how to conserve farm land. New laws and capital. Pairing immigrant farmers with land. (Here's the first hit from a quick search, not authorative, just to get the gist. https://crosscut.com/focus/2020/02/how-immigrant-farmer-kent-reconnecting-her-agrarian-roots https://crosscut.com/focus/2020/02/how-immigrant-farmer-kent...) These efforts to conserve -- farms, wet lands, open spaces -- make me so proud. At the same time, I'm pro development. Done smart. Such a huge opportunity. I'm completely on board with Matt Yglessia's One Billion Americans (1B4USA) thesis. For so many reasons. Mostly as a way to reinvest and revitalize the entirety of our country. Back to Main Street. Back to family farms. Back to localized economies.

big_youth 6y ago

Great post but one point, Whole foods sells 1/2 gallons for $6! I don't drink much milk but would gladly pay a premium for high quality, local, organic milk.

isaacimagine 6y ago
Thanks for raising that point! The dairy I worked at does sell high quality local raw milk; they have a pasteurizer to produce cheese, but they can't use the same one to produce pasteurized milk. Additionally, the cows usually produce an excess volume of milk, which is sold so it doesn't go to waste: it's important to remember that even if the milk is sold for, say, $6 at Whole Foods, not all of the markup goes to the farmer.
sadfev 6y ago
Depends on the brand, good organic milk is worth it. Bare minimum is Whole Foods 365 brand In New England Organic Valley is as good as it gets for store milk, https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/dairy/ https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/dairy/
driverdan 6y ago
Organic is a scam and Whole Foods is a rip off. Please explain what "premium" milk is. Milk is a commodity. All milk has a code on the bottle that indicates which farm produced it. If you compare codes you'll often find the cheaper store brands are the same thing as the more expensive brands.

bane 6y ago

It's not unusual for businesses to move up the value chain when their segment commoditizes. Dairies are actually a couple steps up the chain from the farmers who grow feed or hay. Cheese, ice cream, etc. are next up. In some places it's grass to baskets to warehousing to shipping. In others it's grass to sheep to wool to textiles to fashion. Still others it's trees to lumber to paper to stationary. Other industries have their own moves. In areas that can't manage this move up tend to see the local industries consolidate until some final monster exists and either also eventually fails too (to external competition) or rent seeks its way to a zombified existence. There's other alternatives to when vertical value growth isn't possible -- like in developing countries, the businesses all coexist together, but tend to price each other into nearly unsupportable levels. Strong regulations tend to kill this alternative off leaving an up or out path one of the few viable ones available.

wwweston 6y ago

> As much as I'd love to work for a FAANG, retire early, and buy a large house in an idyllic mountain town, I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. It's already arguably happened; fruit orchards and irrigation turns were big part of the milieu in Orem/Provo a few decades back, and they're all but absent now, and in general the Wasatch Front has taken a dramatic turn away from agriculture in the last 30 years. It's easy to imagine the metro areas like the Bay and Los Angeles like they've always been that way, especially if you're younger than the internet. But if you look at early/mid-century maps or pictures you realize that there was still a great deal of open space and agriculture mixed in. It doesn't take a genius to realize similar changes are coming along regions like the I-15 corridor. California problems follow California popularity.

dendrite9 6y ago
I assume you know about the orchards of Silicon Valley? It's an interesting bit of history to me. I didn't realize the same thing was happening along the Wasatch Front, but it makes sense. E: forgot the link https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/the-last-of-his-kind-farming-fruit-in-the-silicon-valley/ https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/the-last-of-his-kind-f...
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  And the orchards of Orange County, California.
- wwweston 6y ago
  Great article! I knew that orchards were part of SV's ag history, but I didn't know about Andy's and that'd be fun to visit.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The problem is the money firehose. Getting rich steadily is fine. Getting rich quickly because of outside factors is what provides perverse incentives, room for bad things to hide and screws everything up. Using fat paychecks to lay waste to small towns is one of the few things tech yuppie and oil pipeline workers have in common. Best (i.e. least worst) case scenario you end up as a rich people playground like Tahoe or Cape Cod where everyone without a conscience runs a business skimming easy money off the wealthy (or becomes a plumber and does it with an extra abstraction), everyone with ambition leaves and everyone else winds up with a substance abuse problem. Worst case the money leaves for good and you wind up like coal country.

arethuza 6y ago

Looks like a autocorrect problem there - "diaries" for "dairies" - took me a while to work this out and was busy researching what a diary was in this kind of context... :-)

isaacimagine 6y ago
Typed out on a phone, can't go back and edit it now ;P

giantg2 6y ago

You can always move to mountain towns in Appalachia. The population has been stagnate or shrinking over the past decades with the mills and mines shutting down.

watchdogtimer 6y ago
Same with rural communities here in the Midwest. We would love to have FAANG refugees move here.
- Loughla 6y ago
  YMMV on this one. In my part of the midwest, home and land prices have almost doubled in the last year, and went up about 6x since we built our house (about 8 years ago). Two reasons: (What used to be called) Yuppies moving out here and working remotely to 'get more in touch with nature' (read: start a blog or something about sustainable living that is really only possible if one of you has a 100k+ salary) and investors from out of the area are purchasing land as an investment. Both of these things drive the cost WAY out of the range of what is (a) reasonable, or (b) attainable. I'm over the whole thing. In an area where the median family income is around 55k/year, anyone that makes double that as a single individual can live like a king. Consequence: none of us that live here can afford the increase in taxes, home values, or property values anymore.
  - ramphastidae 6y ago
    This is the pure definition of NIMBYism. You built a house there eight years ago that has increased 6x in value. Now others are trying to do the same thing and you demonize them for it. You should be complaining about state policy, not the people seeking a better life for themselves.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      What state policy would address these issues? It's possible he's a local. That could also mean he didn't move there with a 2x salary. So it's not really the same thing. While there's nothing wrong with people moving for a better life, there's also nothing wrong with someone lamenting fundamental changes in their community that they see as detrimental.

refurb 6y ago

I'd hate for that same town to loose its historical roots and what makes it that special idyllic mountain town in the first place. This is why housing prices in the Bay are so stupid. People don’t want it to lose it’s magic and their solution is to freeze practically all building. As a result, even the people there are forced out due to growing rents, increasing housing prices force kids to leave, commercial rents replace tattoo shops with skin spas. And you lose the magic anyways.

bluGill 6y ago

Dairies are consolidating because scale factors make the big ones more competitive than small ones. Though with modern shipping taking milk from the middle of nowhere makes sense.

specialist 6y ago

My family's farms were replaced by starter castles. I sort of understand the economic and social forces. It still makes me incredibly sad. (I can't even drive past my family's former lands.) Sprawl is evil. Big Ag is evil. More recently, some local farmers worked with local government and businesses to figure how to conserve farm land. New laws and capital. Pairing immigrant farmers with land. (Here's the first hit from a quick search, not authorative, just to get the gist. https://crosscut.com/focus/2020/02/how-immigrant-farmer-kent-reconnecting-her-agrarian-roots https://crosscut.com/focus/2020/02/how-immigrant-farmer-kent...) These efforts to conserve -- farms, wet lands, open spaces -- make me so proud. At the same time, I'm pro development. Done smart. Such a huge opportunity. I'm completely on board with Matt Yglessia's One Billion Americans (1B4USA) thesis. For so many reasons. Mostly as a way to reinvest and revitalize the entirety of our country. Back to Main Street. Back to family farms. Back to localized economies.