Organic Valley in the News

Their name is known across the country and is getting more popular by the day.

As the organic food movement gains momentum so too does the business community of one small city tucked away in Southwestern Wisconsin.

It has all the makings of your average county fair but as the people of La Farge will tell you, there's something special cooking here.

Organic Farmer Zach Biermann says, "It's a good opportunity to know and learn where your food comes from and it's right here in Wisconsin."

From their humble beginnings in an old creamery to a new building and a new co-op of 12-hundred farmers in 34 states, Organic Valley has always called the small city of La Farge home.

Set in the green hills of this dairy farming state, where a single white church spire rises in the distance, the Beidler family farm looks - and sounds - like an archetype of Vermont agriculture. Twice a day, farmer Brent Beidler calls his cows into the shingled barn for milking, a regular cycle that links him to the state's long dairy tradition.

But later this summer, in a sign of changing times across the region's rolling farmland, Beidler will do something new. He will climb into his big red combine to harvest an American staple rarely seen in a century in the Green Mountain State, wheat.

Spurred to action by sharply rising prices for transportation and animal feed, and surging consumer demand for locally grown foods, more farmers in New England are deciding to grow grains.

In the last five years, the number of Vermont farms producing traditional Midwestern crops, including wheat, rye, barley, oats, soybeans, and corn, has increased from a handful to as many as 15, and more are poised to join them, according to a state estimate. This spring, at a statewide grain-growers meeting where farmers formed a new group, the Northern Grain Growers Association, organizers had to turn away would-be participants after 80 to 100 people showed up, including some from Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Going organic at Bishop Dairy Farm was truly a move to greener pastures, says the farm's now-smiling owner Gerald Bishop.

"I've been doing this for 50 years, and this is my best year ever," said Bishop, whose family a year ago shifted his dairy's milk sales to Organic Valley CROPP Cooperative.

The move saved the 100-Holstein dairy, making it the first state-certified organic milk producer in Jefferson County.

Before going organic, Gerald Bishop was selling his milk at the same price he got in the early 1970s.

The benefits of going organic included a substantial increase in the dairy's milk price, now at $27.30 per 100 pounds, which has increased more than $2 per 100 pounds over the past year to compensate for rising feed prices.

"Cows aren't Legos," explains Jerri Cook, an organic dairy farmer and writer from the Wisconsin northwoods. "You can't just rearrange genetic parts and expect it to be a cow anymore."

Cook, along with her husband, Wayne, currently milk a herd of 25 cows, selling their milk to Organic Valley Family of Farms, the largest farmer-owned organic cooperative in the country. She represents the rural renaissance of farming women today: smart, sassy, steadfastly committed to educating about the importance of sustainable agriculture — and still the kind of gal who would warmly welcome you into her farmhouse kitchen for coffee, cheesecake and conversation.

Farming organically for over twenty-five years, the Cooks represent a small but dedicated group of farmers who have operated under these principles for their entire agriculture career. "Wayne's family always farmed organically, thanks to his independent grandparents who didn't want any part in what they saw as the government pushing chemicals," says Cook with a smile. "I grew up an army brat in Germany and never experienced conventional American agriculture. When you're never exposed to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the concept logically doesn't make sense. We ourselves didn't want to eat food laced with that stuff; why would we ever sell it to anyone else?"

For Daniel and Darlene Coehoorn, sustainability is more than staying away from chemicals and leaving the land in as good or better condition than they found it. It also is earning enough money from farm production to be able to stay in business without an off-farm job.

"We didn't even aspire to be organic when we moved here," said Mrs. Coehoorn of the 520 acres of land they own and rent in Fond du Lac County. "We slowly started to convert all the crop acres to organic, because we needed the money, and conventional crops weren't returning enough."

The couple bought the farm in 1989 and in 1994 had their first fields certified as being organic. Both agreed they wanted the crops to be organic, but Mrs. Coehoorn admitted to being leery about shifting their dairy herd.

Neighboring dairy farmers in Columbus, Wis., thought Jim Miller and his family had embarked on a path to bankruptcy when they decided to produce organic milk. How could you run a farm without chemicals and make milk for a market that barely existed?

That was over a decade ago, and the neighbors turned out to be wrong. Organic became the sweet spot of the milk business, providing farmers like Miller with more-stable prices, and often more profits, than conventional dairy operations.

But over the last year, the milk business has been turned on its head, with many organic farmers getting squeezed like never before and conventional dairy farmers enjoying the best of times. Meanwhile, consumers have seen prices for conventional milk post double-digit increases, but barely budge for the organic stuff.

That's beginning to change, though. Many of the same factors that sent conventional milk prices soaring climbing feed and fuel costs, for instance are also at work in the organic world. It just takes longer for rising costs to wend their way through the organic food market because of its relatively slow-moving pricing system.

Real butter, real cream cheese, real food. Ecological nutritionist Joan Gussow put it succinctly: “As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists.” I agree, craving direct connections to our food source, be it the cow or a crop.

What used to be a decision between whole, low fat, and skim is now a choice between whole, low fat, skim, lactose-free, flavored, organic, conventional, soy, and milk made without artificial hormones.

The dairy aisle has grown increasingly cluttered with options and state lawmakers are now wrestling over labeling one of those options: Milk made without recombinant bovine growth hormones (rBGH).

The synthetic hormone linked by some to health problems in humans when ingested artificially reproduces a naturally occurring hormone found in dairy cows. It's produced by Monsanto Corp. and sold under the name Posilac. Dairy farmers administer Posilac to lactating cows to increase yields. Its use is banned in Europe and Canada, but the US Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the artificial hormone in 1993.

Sales of milk labeled "artificial hormone-free" do not appear to be affecting the organic market, says Eric Newman, a representative at Organic Valley, a cooperative that sells milk under the Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farm labels. But many in the dairy industry see Wal-Mart's recent decision to sell rBGH-free milk as a bellwether. "It'll probably put the death knell to synthetic growth hormone," Mr. Newman says.

"If people can get more connected with food, we can make intelligent decisions about using the land." The first Earth Day, which took place on April 22, 1970, itself borrowed from a rather radical concept. Its founder, Gaylord Nelson, an U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and environmentalist, encouraged a grassroots protest against what was happening to the environment. Twenty million Americans responded that day.

Marquez' dream started in 2002, she explained, when she and a few colleagues were in New York City attending an Earth Day event and they all noted how there was no food involved. Imagine, a holiday without eating. Sure, on Earth Day people may plant a tree or pick up trash, but no one, surprisingly, thought about food. Then four years ago, she and her staff started the tradition among themselves and vowed to keep it going, hoping others would pick up on the idea. There are no hard and fast rules about what to serve at an Earth Day dinner, but Marquez emphasizes two important aspects: cook from scratch and have a conversation.

Organic Valley Family of Farms, which was founded 20 years ago by seven Wisconsin farmers, said yesterday its 2007 revenues reached $432.5 million, a 29 percent increase over 2006 and an almost 250 percent increase over the past five years.

Today, La Farge, Wis.-based Organic Valley is the nation's largest farmer-owned cooperative, with more than 1,200 farmers in 34 states and one Canadian province.

The company said in a statement that 20 years after its beginning, the cooperative's shared vision still maintains: Work in partnership to produce healthy, nutritious organic food; keep family farmers farming; help revitalize rural communities while serving as stewards of the earth; and always offer a stable, sustainable pay price to its member farmers.