Congressman Visits U.P Farm

Press Release

It's not every day a U.S. Congressman stops by the Bergdahl farm for a quality time discussion, which made this day pretty special and unique. Dr. Benishek was here to listen and take a tour of the dairy farm which has been in operation since 1883.

The congressman certainly got an earful about how difficult it is to run a farm these days with all the regulations in place. Patti Bergdah, the owner of the farm said, "One that I'm concerned with is the waters the United States issue with the EPA right now and designating basically ditches as a waterway for them to have authority over."

Dr. Benishek is on the house agricultural committee and and says he doesn't want to see the few remaining farms in the region shut down, which he says, will require support from state and federal agencies. "I'm on the ad committee, I'm the only member from Michigan on the ad committee so we have some influence on how they are writing their regulations that control farmers basically across the country and we want to make sure that the regulations are reasonable and fair to farmers so that we can produce high quality food," said Benishek. The congressman goes on to say, "The feds have instituted a lot of regulations that make it difficult for farmers to do business. The EPA is trying to regulate every bit of water in the country I mean even like transient water that may be in field for a few days."

While the Bergdahl family says running a farm is more challenging now than in past years, they intend to keep going.

There is a sense of reassurance they won't face future struggles alone now that their congressman has seen the place up close. Chuck Bergdah said, "There's only two dairy farms in Marquette County which is the largest county east of the Mississippi and we only have two and we use to have 30 or 35 and there's a reason why they are going out."

Source