Organic Valley in the News

(originally published in Summer 2000)

But between scooping feed and hauling straw bedding, he takes a moment to point out to a visitor a tangled pile of metal and concrete heaped behind a shed. This is all that's left of a system of confinement hog production he and his wife, Irene, used for 14 years.

“Those days are gone,” says Frantzen without a hint of regret.

Those days consisted of raising hogs in closed buildings with concrete floors. The floors had special slots in them so that urine and feces could drain down into a pit below. All this liquid manure had to be pumped out and disposed of. Such a system was bad for the stressed-out animals (they fought each other and required lots of antibiotics) and the environment (liquid manure often finds its way into waterways), as well as members of the Frantzen family (they had to work in facilities full of dust and toxic gases). In short, says Frantzen, this system treated animals as machines, manure as waste, and farmers as barnyard janitors.

But three years ago the Frantzens junked the trappings of confinement and started raising hogs in deep-straw bedding in open-ended, Quonset-hut like structures called hoop houses. The family was already raising hogs on carefully managed pastures in the summer, but producing pork during harsh midwestern winters meant the hogs had to be confined – or so the Frantzens thought until they visited Sweden. There they saw pigs being raised under natural conditions using deep straw bedding.

When I was growing up, I knew nothing of store-bought butter - those smooth, rectangular sticks stacked four to a box. But we certainly ate butter.

The butter that graced our table was something special. Not only was it creamy and delicious, it was handcrafted. My mother knew the simple secret of turning fresh, liquid cream into a delicately salted spread that would make your mouth water. I guess you could say I was born into butter, so I never questioned whether or not it was good for me. But of course it was. Even a smidgen of butter was a whole slice of heaven.

When looking to buy top-notch butter, consider Organic Valley (organicvalley.coop) or Pastureland (pasture land.coop). Both offer pastured organic butter, and Organic Valley also offers cultured butter, which is slowly ripened to sweetness using live cultures (those good-for-you probiotics also found in yogurt). Of course, nothing beats homemade butter; so if you have access to a happy, pastured cow, try this easy recipe straight from Mama Butters' breakfast table.

Not so long ago, consumers demanding superior design, eco-friendly products, organic food and the like were hailed as harbingers of a new 21st-century spending savvy. This explained why retailers like Whole Foods and Target were thriving. And it created a great environment for clever, virtuous little companies like Recycline: its Preserve line of colorful kitchen and bathroom products made entirely from recycled plastic synched up perfectly with the wishes of this powerful consumer tribe. Accordingly, Preserve sales, selection and distribution grew steadily.

Today, of course, savvy is measured in pennies pinched — or at least, that’s the consensus of many trend observers (who seem to have forgotten the earlier assessment). Organic-food sales are suffering. Some people are flat-out bragging about shunning cool design. And both Target and Whole Foods, which happen to be Preserve’s biggest retail distributors, are struggling. So what does this new environment mean for a brand like Preserve? Its products aren’t terribly expensive — $2 for a toothbrush, $6 for a set of tumblers, $10 for a cutting board. But shoppers who value frugal over eco can clearly find cheaper alternatives.

"If we weren't an organic dairy farm, we wouldn't survive," said Craig Dahm, while sitting in the kitchen of the farmhouse where his grandparents once lived.

He and his wife Sharon have managed a small dairy herd for 30 years on a 160-acre farm near Dodge Center. Two years ago, after a three-year transition process, they were certified organic.

"Being certified organic, we get a good, stable price for our milk," Dahm said. He sells his milk to Organic Valley. The milk is delivered either to the Twin Cities for bottling or to Wisconsin for cheese.

A neighboring organic farmer convinced Dahm to go organic and mentored him through the transition.

A deep, dark scary recession hasn’t cowed the turnout for the 20th annual Organic Farming Conference held here this weekend. Registrants mostly from Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa topped 2,300, up from 1,900 last year. Several hundred walk-ins Friday and Saturday are expected to push the number higher.

But what’s most revealing about Organic Valley -- and the yearly organic conference here -- is how explicitly organic idealism has been married to the organic industry.

No better example is Organic Valley’s longtime CEO George Siemon, a onetime back-to-the-earth counter-culturalist who has proved a remarkably shrewd if idiosyncratic corporate leader. When we talked Thursday, Siemon made the case that the rise of the green-oriented millennial generation and the deepening recession could have a salutary effect on American life.

Organic Valley is looking to help its farmers increase profits. The organic cooperative awarded $40,000 in grant money to the Research Foundation at California State University (CSU), Chico through its Farmers Advocating for Organics grant program. The money will help fund a two-year study focused on improving net profit by improving pasture management. The money is also being used to help the school quantify the economic costs and benefits of amending soil using organic methods to improve output, according to Organic Valley.

“The goal is to provide producers with options to lower their feed costs by reducing grain inputs under intensive grazing management,” says Cynthia Daley, a professor in the College of Agriculture at CSU, Chico.

By using intensive pasture management techniques, grain inputs can be reduced, leading to less expenditures for feed, Daley says. Some models show that ranchers could save between $1.50 and $2 per cow per day in feed costs.

Two organic food manufacturers, Nature’s Path Organic Foods and Organic Valley, joined with Organic Gardening magazine to support the Farmers Can Be Heroes program. Farmers Can Be Heroes, from the Rodale Institute, is an outreach and education program designed to praise farmers as heroes who feed us and are mitigating climate change and preserving the earth for future generations. Farmers Can Be Heroes offers an online course for conventional farmers interested in transitioning to organic. Consumers can support it by purchasing one Organic Valley product and one Nature’s Path product and then mailing in both proof of purchases. In return, they will receive a free, one-year subscription to Organic Gardening magazine and a chance to win a year of free breakfasts (organic milk and cereal). Organic Valley and Nature’s Path will contribute $1 each for every proof of purchase mailed in for a contribution of up to $50,000 to the Rodale Institute’s Farmers Can Be Heroes program.

The Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance announced a partnership Feb. 13 to field test its Baseline Practices for Sustainability with Wisconsin-based Organic Valley Family of Farms. The nonprofit SBA published its baseline practices in December 2008, after a year long consultative process involving the biodiesel industry, environmentalists and other stakeholders. Organic Valley will be the first organization to test the applicability of the BPS among its farmer members and in its distribution system.

Organic Valley will apply the practices outlined in the BPS document to their existing systems and report its findings to the SBA. The data collected from Organic Valley and other pilot programs which will be launched later this year, will be used to develop criteria and indicators for an independent certification system for sustainable biodiesel that the SBA plans to implement in 2010.

Cows that are given names produce more milk than those that are not, says a new study out of England.

The study, conducted by Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne, discovered that more affectionate treatment of cattle — including giving cows names — can increase milk production by more than 68 gallons annually. An average cow produces about 2,000 gallons of milk a year.

Douglas says the positive effect of naming cows has always been a belief among farmers, but until now, there was no scientific evidence.

"I think farmers have always thought that a good relationship with cows helped, but I don't think they knew how," says Douglas, who conducted the study as a part of her Ph.D. thesis on the effects of positive treatment of cattle.

The mood was hopeful at the Sauk County Job Center, where about 200 applicants came to a job fair Wednesday for a new Reedsburg-based company.

Wisconsin Specialty Protein will be opening in Reedsburg this March, and it kicked-off its hiring process with a job fair. Call-backs will be starting in weeks for approximately 20 new job openings.

General Motors might be seen as a catalyst for manufacturing in Wisconsin, but Johnson said her business' is propelled by farms such as Organic Valley, considered one of the leading brands for organic milk in the country.

And despite a tough economy, the CROPP Cooperative, of which Organic Valley is a member, reports total sales are expected to increase by 22% over 2007, even with slower growth in the fourth quarter.