farmer’s Recent Comments

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  environmentally responsible behavior

  When folks push organic products and encourage environmentally responsible behavior, but then complain when corporations or even small businesses adopt such views AND make a profit, they feed the right-wing spin machine that cannot accept that people actually just care about the state of the planet.

  Well that's just it.  Dean Foods is  not encouraging environmentally responsible behavior by having a 5,000  cow dairy. I don't have a problem with anyone owning 5,000 cows, but one should break them up on many different farms. Like a farmer friend of mine told me, cows can either heal the earth or destroy it.On Business Week article gave some the wrong impression, company says posted 3 years ago 20 Responses

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  Dean Foods

  Sam, I think they should shut down there 5000 cow farm because mega-dairies are a clear violation of the spirit of organics. Those industrialized CAFO's are what organics left to get away from. 5000 cows are way too many on one spot. I am going on my 5th year of organic dairying and my 31st year of dairy farming in Vermont. So I am quite familiar with Dean Foods. Gregg Engles who heads up Deans started Suiza and then merged with Deans as their CEO. My beef with Deans is, with or without greenwashing they could truly care less about dairy farmers, otherwise they would not be bringing 11 dollar milk to their conventional dairy producers. Another sore spotis when Deans Foods spent millions to kill the Northeast Dairy Compact a few years ago that was the only safety net a conventional dairy farmer had, that if was still in place, could be returning 16 to 17 dollars for them, instead of farmers receiving $11 for their milk now, when I received $14 in 1980. Dean Foods could not pay me enough to ship my milk to them because I do not trust them. And that is why I belong to the Organic Valley co-operative that was started by farmers and run by farmers. And we don't allow factory farms in our cooperative. Also our cooperative is a 100 per cent organic that markets produce, eggs, pork and beef. Even with the Wal-Mart's of the world, one can still find the organic food produced the way it was meant to be produced.
  On Business Week article gave some the wrong impression, company says posted 3 years ago 20 Responses

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  disagree

  
  As a small organic dairy farmer from Vermont, I take issue with your assessment of organic dairying. Organic dairying is not even close to factory farming. While there are a few dairies who are adopting the confined animal feeding operation model (CAFO), they are the exception rather than the rule. 99% of organic dories are organic legitimate. Even with some dairy farms flaunting the rules, one can always find organic dairy products that are truly organically produced. If you don't think there is a difference, come and fill out my annual organic dairy certification application. You will change your mind.On Fast food goes organic and natural posted 3 years ago 9 Responses

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  In defense of Stonyfield

  As someone who has dairy farmed in Vermont for 30 years, the last five years organically, I would like to say that the 100 or so organic small dairy farms, would not be here, because my co-op (OrganicValley) supplies Stonyfield with organic milk produced in Vermont. I certainly can understand the concern with these big corporations getting into organic, but the fact is, under our present system, all those small organic organic farms that the general public wants to see, would not be there without Stonyfield buying our organic milk.

  As far as I know Stonyfield, is not buying milk powder from New Zealand, although they did look into it.On Business Week cover story looks at the watering down of the organic ethos posted 3 years, 1 month ago 29 Responses

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  Some questions for Alex

  Alex, I've been dairy farmer of 30 years. The picture you are trying to paint, at least what it seems to me, and that is only organic uses cow manure for fertilizer which is not true. But the part that is most deceptive, is your insinuation that conventional farmers do not use cow manure. What do you think conventional farmers do with all that cow manure they produce, dump it in the river? No, they use it to fertilize fields.On E. Coli news is bad news, any way you cut it posted 3 years, 1 month ago 22 Responses