A spate of similar plant closures this summer has stunned those whose livelihoods depend on Vermont’s signature dairy industry, not least because it comes as protein is enjoying such a moment among consumers that producers in other states are racing to build new facilities and boost output. The damage has been concentrated in Franklin County, a verdant stretch of the Champlain Valley near the Canadian border long known as Vermont’s dairy capital.

Perrigo, the multinational pharmaceutical company, laid off 162 workers in June at its infant formula plant in the town of Georgia, part of a phased shutdown that’s expected to claim about 420 Vermont jobs by next year. The national cooperative Dairy Farmers of America is preparing to idle its St. Albans plant this month, eliminating 80 jobs. Elsewhere in the state, HP Hood closed its Booth Bros. Dairy plant in Barre this spring, laying off 70 people.

“We haven’t experienced anything like this in decades,” said Tim Smith, executive director of the Franklin County Industrial Development Corporation.

Vermont dairy farms have been closing and consolidating for decades. What’s new, and unnerving, is that the plants that process the milk are now closing, too, triggering fears of a vicious circle that could claim yet more farms. The closures are forcing farmers to ship their milk to plants much farther afield, incurring higher transportation costs that threaten to consume more of their already paltry milk checks.

“It’s felt like quite a blow,” said Whitney Hull, a dairy herd management educator for the University of Vermont Extension. “Dairy farmers are upset, and they’re frustrated, and they’re like, ‘What does this mean for us?’”

Perhaps most confounding to Vermonters is that the closures have come as the dairy industry is booming elsewhere in the country — fueled by the nation’s protein obsession and ever-growing dairy exports. As processors try to keep pace, they’re building new plants in states better poised than Vermont to rapidly scale up production.

“There’s a demand for milk processing plants, but none are in New England,” said Mary White, a Corinth dairy farmer and president of the Vermont Farm Bureau.

The problem, according to Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts, is that milk production in the state has remained stubbornly stagnant for years.

“We essentially need more cows,” he said.

But many Vermont farmers are loath to take on the debt required to expand, given the many challenges of recent years: soaring energy costs, increased immigration enforcement, drought, and floods among them. They’re calling on the state to provide new support for the industry, perhaps by subsidizing investments in new equipment and facilities.

The outlook isn’t entirely gloomy for Vermont dairy. More farmers are processing their own products, adding new sources of revenue; cheesemakers continue to earn national recognition. And companies such as Monument Farms in Weybridge are bypassing regional and national cooperatives by bottling and trucking their own milk.

In Enosburgh, Ovitt is similarly striving to control his own destiny. When he learned Hochland would shutter the plant, he offered to buy it. In September, he plans to reopen the operation as Franklin County Cheese.

As a condition of the deal with Hochland, Ovitt is barred from producing its primary product, cream cheese, for 10 years. But he’ll take over contracts for two niche, yet profitable, products: bakers cheese and plant-based Tofutti. He’s seeking out new clients and, in the meantime, plans to rent out space in his refrigerated warehouse and clean the tanks of milk trucks, as required between each load.

“We’re just trying to stabilize the ship, keep this beast going,” he said.

At first, Ovitt will be able to employ only around 20 people, but he’s hoping to hire back more if the business is able to grow.

“As far as I know, there’s been no interruptions since 1899,” he said of the plant. “It’s an old facility, but we’re gonna try and keep it going.”

If you build it

America’s growing appetite for dairy might suggest that Vermont farmers should be milking the profits.

Over the last two years, “Protein, all of a sudden, has become the star,” said Christopher Wolf, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business.

Americans taking GLP-1 drugs to lose weight are incorporating it into their diets, he said, “And everyone under the age of 30 is convinced they have to eat massive amounts of protein every day.”

That’s great news for the dairy industry, which has been ramping up production of high-protein products, such as Fairlife’s Core Power shakes, replete with 42 grams of protein per bottle.

“The dairy supply chain is in a state of hyper-fluctuation at the moment,” said Laura Ginsburg, dairy strategy and innovation manager for Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets. “There’s more investment happening in dairy plants at greater volumes — higher-dollar projects — than has happened within the past couple of decades.”

Just not in Vermont.

Processors used to build plants where there were already cows, Ginsburg said, but now the dynamic has reversed and they’re instead seeking out locations with cheap energy, good land, and an available workforce.

“They build a plant and the milk is gonna come,” she said.

The biggest boom in the Northeast is taking place about five hours west of Vermont, in a stretch of New York from Rome to Buffalo where Chobani, Fairlife, and Great Lakes Cheese have invested in major new plants. State subsidies played a role in those companies’ siting decisions, Wolf said, but a bigger factor was the availability of land that could host mega-farms of 5,000 to 10,000 cows.

“A lot of the processors had more confidence that New York State farms could grow to fill the plant,” he said.

It’s harder to scale up in a small state like Vermont, where costs are higher, land is in demand, and labor is in short supply, according to Tebbetts, the agriculture secretary.

Vermont dairy has been consolidating for generations. In the 1960s, more than 6,000 farms milked an average of a couple dozen cows apiece. In the last decade alone, the number of cow dairies in the state dropped by half, from about 840 to 420, according to UVM Extension.

And while Vermont’s average herd size has grown to more than 260 cows — with some farms hosting thousands — the total number of cows in the state declined by 13 percent over the last decade, and the amount of milk produced fell by 8 percent.

“While our dairy industry is very important and a big part of our economy, it’s been kind of stagnant,” said Tom Bellavance, a Vermont dairy farmer who also runs Ag Venture Financial Services, which lends money to dairy producers. “The challenge in Vermont is not just how do we maintain our dairy industry, but how do we grow it?”

‘It’s not all gravy’

During a smoke break outside the St. Albans Creamery, a veteran employee considered the more than two decades he’d spent at the plant, including every Christmas since he graduated from high school.

He knew production was down, and he was expecting a round of layoffs, but when Dairy Farmers of America announced in June it would idle the plant for the foreseeable future, the news came as “a shocker,” he said.

Now, he and his colleagues are seeking work elsewhere ahead of the planned shutdown on Aug. 17 — often competing for jobs with workers at the other Franklin County plants downsizing or closing this summer.

“In our county it’s slim pickins looking for a job right now,” said the man, who asked not to be identified for fear of spooking potential employers.

DFA hasn’t said exactly why it’s idling the plant, other than that the decision “reflects broader operational and network changes needed to best serve our farmer-owners and customers.” Some have speculated it could be related to a persistent stench that has wafted from the plant through the city, and the local Teamsters union has said it’s retaliation for a 12-day strike last year — allegations the cooperative denies.

Bellavance, who serves on DFA’s board, said the explanation may be simpler: The St. Albans Creamery is a “balancing plant” that can take excess milk and turn it into cream, skim milk, and powder. The cooperative could make more money trucking milk to facilities that make higher-value products, such as fluid milk, including its Garelick Farms plant in Franklin, Mass., and the new plants in western New York.

Harold Howrigan, a sixth-generation dairy farmer who also represents Vermont on DFA’s board, said those higher returns will be passed along to farmers. But “it’s not all gravy,” he said, because the farmers themselves will have to pay for the increased transportation costs.

A common thread among all the Vermont plants shedding workers is that the facilities are no longer locally owned.

“It’s kind of a reflection of what happens when these big companies come in and purchase smaller companies,” said Curtis Clough, president of the Teamsters’ Local 597, which represents DFA’s St. Albans workers. “They then have control over our future.”

In 1919, Franklin County farmers banded together to build the creamery next to a railroad line in downtown St. Albans so they could ship butter to Boston. A century later, the remaining members of the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery voted to merge with Kansas-based DFA because they could not afford much-needed upgrades to the plant.

DFA is now the largest dairy cooperative in the country, with more than 9,000 farmer-owners, and it’s one of the largest dairy companies in the world.

“When management is in Kansas City and not in St. Albans, Vt., some decisions might be made differently,” said Kevin Kouri, chair of the Vermont Dairy Producers Alliance.

The next Rhode Island?

More than 50 dairies once populated the Upper Valley town of Corinth, according to White, the president of the Vermont Farm Bureau. Now, hers is one of only two left standing.

That’s a problem because, as dairy cooperatives truck milk farther away from Vermont, they may be less inclined to pick up small loads from farms that are out of the way.

“At the end of the day, if they say, ‘No, you’re too far out there,’ we’re out of business,” White said.

And as dairy farmers fold, the land they steward may be sold off and developed, industry advocates warn.

“Vermont’s image, Vermont’s brand is highly driven by the Vermont landscape that is cared for by the Vermont dairy farmer,” said Kouri, of the producers alliance.

“I would hate to see Vermont become Rhode Island,” said Stephanie Pope, a Bridport farmer. “When you think of Vermont, you think of open areas — and you think of farms and you think of cows on the hillsides. Do we really want to lose that? I don’t think so.”

David Lynn, CEO of Agri-Mark cooperative, readily acknowledges that Vermont’s dairy industry is facing serious stress. But, he said, “All is not lost.”

He thinks the state has an opportunity to lean into its “dairy mystique,” like the aged cheddar his co-op produces under the Cabot Creamery label.

Agri-Mark continues to operate two processing plants in Vermont and is interested in investing in both of them, Lynn said, particularly if the state government helps out.

Tebbetts, the agriculture secretary, said he’s studying programs in Massachusetts, Maine, and New York that incentivize new processing capacity or directly support farmers. He hopes to bring a proposal to the state legislature this winter.

“Vermont cannot control the price of milk paid to the farmer,” he said. “What can we control? We can control taxes. We can control tax incentives. We can control loan programs. We can control regulations.”

In addition to policy changes, Tebbetts hopes that people such as Ovitt, the Enosburgh plant manager, will succeed at localizing dairy infrastructure. And he thinks the state can realistically court mid-size processors like Commonwealth Dairy, a 16-year-old yogurt plant in Brattleboro.

For those plans to succeed, farmers like Pope will need to stay in business — and potentially get bigger. She currently milks around 600 cows, and as the next generation of the family gets involved with the operation, the clan is considering investing $4 million in a new barn and milking facility that would support several hundred more cows.

“Do we make that investment?” Pope said. “Is there a future for dairy in Vermont? That’s what we’re asking ourselves right now.”

Paul Heintz can be reached at paul.heintz@globe.com. Follow him on X @paulheintz.