The nightmare for any dairy producer is to receive notification that they are losing their milk market. Securing a new milk market at the last minute certainly is easier said than done and often turns into crisis mode for a farm to find a valuable market that is willing to take their milk.
This is the unfortunate story that played out earlier this summer for many Pennsylvania dairy farmers, including John Painter of Painterland Farms LLC. who milks 400 cows near Westfield. The Northeast dairy farmer shares that he couldn’t believe it when he received notice from his milk processor that they were dropping him and that he only had five days to find another place to ship his milk to.
“Organic Valley stepped in and is allowing us to continue to do what we love,” Painter says.
Organic Valley welcomed 50 organic family farms throughout the Northeast, including Painterland Farms. Within days of learning of these farmers’ plights, representatives from Organic Valley were in Pennsylvania meeting with the families and sitting down to discuss their options.
“Our mission is imperative – especially after seeing these family farms lose their market with little to no notice. What we have seen across the country is that when small family farms go out of business, they don’t come back,” Travis Forgues, Organic Valley executive vice president of membership, says. “At the rate these farms are currently disappearing, there won’t be any small family farms left in America. However, if all of us do our part, we can keep these small family farms viable.”
“It’s a weight off our shoulders – that’s for sure,” Painter says. “Everyone on the Organic Valley staff that we dealt with was very attentive, responsive and helpful. With their help and quickly picking up the procedural pace, we turned a bad situation into a new opportunity!”
So far this year, Organic Valley has welcomed more than 60 new farms that were dropped by other companies in the dairy industry.
“As farms face increasing pressure both financially and climatically, Organic Valley continues to fulfill its mission of saving small family farms across the rural landscape,” says Elizabeth Mullin, public relations specialist with Organic Valley. “Due to our supply and demand forecasting we had done earlier in the year preparing for the Northeast, we were able to offer them a market with the fastest turnaround in our cooperative’s history – one week.”
