Amish farmers square off against Big Organic in milk battle
KALONA, Iowa: This small town has become a landmark in the organic-farm movement, and it has nothing to do with foodies or hippies.
Instead it has been Amish farmers who, in their suspenders and widebrimmed hats, have helped develop one of the densest clusters of organic farms in the United States. More than 90 operations certified by the Agriculture Department have emerged within a 10-mile radius, producing, among other things, corn, soybeans, eggs and, perhaps most important, milk.
“This is our living and our way of life,” said Eldon T. Miller, 71, an Amish dairy farmer here. A little over 20 years ago, Miller began holding informational meetings in his basement about organics, and the idea slowly spread across the area.
The question for small organic dairy farmers is how long they can hold out against growing competition from very big dairies producing large volumes of organic milk that, in the view of many here, does not deserve the label.
A glut of organic milk has sunk prices across the United States, threatening livelihoods and rekindling longstanding suspicions that some of the large organic dairies that have emerged are swamping the market with milk that does not meet organic standards. Over the years, some of these very large dairies, most of them in the West, have been cited for violating organic rules by the USDA or inspection agencies. To the chagrin of many here, most have been allowed to continue operating. Then, last month, The Washington Post reported that one of the nation’s largest dairy producers, Colorado-based Aurora Organic Dairy, a supplier to Walmart, Costco and Albertsons, appeared to fall short of organic grazing standards.
“Nobody’s real happy right now,” said James Swantz, an Amish father of eight who milks about 70 cows here. “We’d like to know what our milk check will be, and right now we can’t tell.”
Over the past year, the price of wholesale organic milk sold by Kalona farms has dropped by more than 33 per cent. Some of their milk - as much as 15 per cent of it - is being sold at the same price as regular milk or just dumped onto the ground, according to a local processor. Organic milk from other small farmers across the United States is also being dumped at similar rates, according to industry figures.
“At first, when the prices started falling, the guys here were just really mad,” said Phil Forbes, a liaison between the Amish farmers here and the company that buys their milk and sells it under a brand called Kalona SuperNatural, which can be found at Whole Foods and similar grocers. “But it’s been going on so long, they’re telling me, ‘ I can’t keep going much longer at these prices.’ What kills me is the customers of those big brands think it’s something like a small Amish farmer who is producing the milk. But the reality is quite different.”
The central issue in the debates over whether the mega- dairies are producing legitimately organic milk revolve around the concept of “grass-fed.”
Organic cows are supposed to be grassfed during grazing season, and many consumers prefer grass-fed milk in the belief that grazing is more natural, is better for the cows and produces higherquality milk. It is one of the reasons that people pay roughly double for milk with the “USDA Organic” label.
Organic dairies, on the other hand, have an incentive to skimp on grazing: A grass-fed cow produces less milk; keeping a cow in a feed lot eating grain boosts production. Adding to the suspicions about the industry, there is statistical evidence of a curiously large increase in the amount of milk each organic cow is producing.
Between 2008 and 2015, the number of organic cows in the United States rose from 202,000 to 229,000, a jump of about 13 per cent. The amount of organic milk products, however, rose from £1.8 billion ( RM10 billion) to £ 2.4 billion, a 35 per cent jump, according to USDA statistics.
Why did the amount of organic milk rise almost three times as fast as the number of organic cows? Some of the increase in production is attributable to better practices, said Edward Maltby, chief of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance. Some of it could be from the larger dairies reducing the amount of grazing to the very minimum required by the regulations.