Organic Dairying: Up-Close and Personal
Apr/080
This year’s Piedmont Farm Tour, April 19-20, features one of those organic dairying success stories that NCDA and Farm Bureau seem to have missed (http://www.carolinafarmstewardsblog.org/?p=7). Lindale Organic Dairy in Snow Camp is the first organic dairy in Chatham County and you can see first hand the incredible work and dedication that Neill and Cori Lindley have put in to convert their formerly conventional operation to organic by visiting them during the tour. The Lindleys have become incredible ambassadors for this kind of dairying and it’s positive impacts on their animals, their pastures, and the families they serve with their milk.
The farm is a member of the Organic Valley CROPP cooperative (http://www.organicvalley.coop/), and Organic Valley is so impressed with the operation that the company is bringing its chain grocery customers to the farm later in April. (CFSA will be taking advantage of the opportunity to present Organic Valley with our 2007 Business of the Year award, http://chatham.ces.ncsu.edu/index.php?page=news&ci=EXCE+2.)
Piedmont Farm Tour visitors will get a unique opportunity–first of it’s kind in the entire Southeast–to see an organic dairy in operation and learn how the Lindleys cope with the challenges of our climate to manage a dairy herd without antibiotics or hormones, while adhering to Organic Valley’s strict pasture requirements (more strict than the USDA’s). Please, when you visit, make sure to pay attention to biosecurity measures we’ll have in place and do your part to help protect the Lindale herd and our food supply!
It looks to be another great tour. Hope you can join us.
Got a Voice?
Mar/083
Last week the North Carolina Dept. of Agriculture and the North Carolina Farm Bureau teamed up to announce an initiative to save the state’s dairy industry. The program, Dairy Advantage, comes in the form of a 28-page report on options and strategies for small dairies to compete in the modern milk marketplace. Search the entire document and you know how many times the word “organic†comes up? Zero.
That’s right, zero. There are at least seven dairies in NC that have been certified organic in the last year, all of them small conventional family dairies that converted to organic with the help of the Organic Valley Family of Farms and the CROPP Cooperative. Here are seven success stories, living proof that organic milk can be produced in our region, and that our dairy farms can take advantage of the growing market for this healthy, wholesome milk. These dairies are role models for other family farms, especially in the mountains and foothills of the Carolinas where farm and herd sizes naturally tend to the optimal size for organic operations.
And yet the Dept. of Ag. and the Farm Bureau don’t even mention organic dairying as an alternative for saving our dwindling supply of family dairies. Not to mention raw milk options, which are verboten under the state’s antiquated public health dogma.
Why the disconnect? It’s tempting to assume a conspiracy, and yet it’s really more likely that the reason is somewhat less sinister, if no less disturbing. The agriculture establishment in the Carolinas is just not used to thinking in terms of sustainability. The (mostly) men and women who run that establishment have been trained in a conventional system, based on conventional agribusiness wisdom, for a generation. That wisdom predicts that only a food system modeled on industrial processes can survive. They’re not used to thinking about an agriculture that isn’t dependent on massive subsidies, synthetic controls, concentration and monoculture.
When I met Larry Wooten, President of the NC Farm Bureau Federation, for the first time, he said to me that he wasn’t opposed to organics: “Consumers should have a choice,†he said. The leap that hasn’t been made in the Carolinas’ ag establishment is that farmers should have a choice, too; that there’s hope for sustaining, and renewing, our dwindling supply of farmers and farmland in the new sustainable ag paradigm.
That’s why CFSA is dedicated to being a Voice for Sustainable Ag, and we are putting more of our resources into the effort. When policy-makers hear the stories of sustainable ag success in our communities first-hand, when they learn about the income that local food systems can provide Carolina farmers, they want to get involved. There’s no stigma attached to organics anymore—the market ($17 billion in the US) and the consumer participation (52% of Americans bought organic food last year) and the buzz (“locavore†was Oxford’s “words of the year†in 2007, http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/locavore/) are impossible to ignore. So that’s why CFSA and its members are working on policy at the local level, to help more officials and opinion-shapers understand how to bring the benefits of sustainable local food systems to their communities.
Our website redesign, this blog, and even the new online food guide are all ultimately geared toward bringing more consumers, farmers and business into the sustainable food movement, and activating them to press for change. So spread the word about this site and CFSA, and help our collective voice grow louder.
To learn more about NCDA’s “Dairy Advantage†plan, visit http://www.agr.state.nc.us/markets/commodit/dairy/dairy_advantage.pdf.
For an interesting exchange on the prices paid to organic milk producers, check out this recent series of posts over at Grist, http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/10/6475/66460
For the latest update on Monsanto’s efforts to upend the market for hormone-free milk, see http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=84227&m=1FNU326&c=mdxcfimlghpcovs. (This is actually a case of sinister motives!)
And if you are interested in the raw milk issue in North Carolina, keep tuned to these pages for an announcement of a bill to overrule NCDA’s requirement that raw milk sold for pet food be dyed gray.
Roland
