A farm expansion planner says it takes time to properly go from concept to completion. Emily Schmidt of Miller Engineers & Scientists in Sheboygan, Wisconsin helps farmers with the expansion process and says there are two time-consuming steps. “If you take the 90-days in just for the permitting process plus the time to design, I mean we usually look into a month to six months in advance before we want to break ground.”
Schmidt says planners like to meet with farmers to look beyond their present expansion plans. “Do kind of like a 1,000-foot view of your farm and like a really big picture on how big you are really going to expand so that you don’t get backed into a corner geographically later.”
Schmidt says sometimes engineers have to deal with problems during the design process, because when one part of the farm operation changes, it impacts everything else from feed storage to manure management.
She says farmers who are considering expansion should discuss their ideas with experts at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the local land and water conservation department, or an engineering firm for guidance.
Source: Brownfield
