Ca­roni dairy farmer Suresh Rami­ah spent the last three years in­vest­ing his life sav­ings in­to his dairy farm, wait­ing for 23 young heifers to ma­ture and dou­ble his milk pro­duc­tion by ear­ly next year.

But just as his mul­ti-year in­vest­ment was set to pay off, Nestlé T&T an­nounced a strate­gic re­view of its op­er­a­tions—in­clud­ing the po­ten­tial clo­sure and sale of its his­toric Val­sayn fac­to­ry—leav­ing Rami­ah and the na­tion’s re­main­ing dairy farm­ers with­out their pri­ma­ry com­mer­cial buy­er.

“Now they come to tell us they want to shut down the fac­to­ry. It is re­al hard,” Rami­ah said, his voice heavy with frus­tra­tion over the sud­den threat to his liveli­hood. He es­ti­mates his loss­es to be in the thou­sands as he al­so ex­pressed con­cerned that his cows could face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing slaugh­tered.