this is a chilly response.

Instead of repeating how his company loves the Earth, etc., it would be better to hear that Gary Hirshberg actually took the time to visit Mark Ouellette, and seriously help him manage his costs.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

I disagree. This is some of the most open and detailed defense of business tactics that I've ever read. He's not trying to convince you Stonyfield is nice and shiny and benevolent--he's trying to explain the challenges facing the industry. But look at the prices paid for milk. That says to me that this company is actually trying to make this system work for all stakeholders.

If Stonyfield were trying to snowjob Grist readers this post would have been a lot more terse and have way more platitudes in it. You can't ever expect a for-profit corporation to do anything but seek profit, but I do believe those corporations can shift their practice to integrate human interests into their bottom line.

I think it's the only way we'll ever see significant change in the total system. But he's right: if Stonyfield folds the mission fails. The company HAS to be strategic. It's an issue of volume and focus. At this point Stonyfield is far too large to act as if they're a homey co-op of a few family farms. As explained in the post, their position currently is more of a liaison and organizer for the whole industrial organic dairy system. At that job I think they're excelling. I don't think it's possible for them to deal with each individual family's difficulties anymore.  

But geez, they do energy audits for farmers. That's awesome!

I don't know, I think they're genuine. At least, I really really want to think so.

Well, JMCharen, I hope you are right.  We have been buying Stonyfield products for a while now (I think; milk and yogurt, I guess; I am the vegan here, I do not do that kind of shopping), and I assume we are not going to stop.

If Gary Hirshberg wants to be open and detailed, and to be more transparent than many another business, that is wonderful.

But notice the war-room-ish tactic, that his first instinct was to send us a generalizing explanation of his business, with a graph.

And for all I know, everything he says is great, and you are right, his is the "only way that we will ever see significant change in the total system."

Meanwhile, though, there is an aggrieved young farmer.  What we really wanted to hear, straight away, from Hirshberg, was not his song-and-dance history, as glorious as it might be, but that he went and talked to that farmer, and encouraged him, and quieted his worries, with real strong assurances.  Hirshberg is apparently not willing to do that.

So, I am missing the point about how his way of doing business is supposedly revolutionary and transformative.  It sounds like the same-old to me.

Then, beyond all that, there is the totally other subject of whether the "organic dairy" designation in fact tells us anything useful about the well-being of the dairy cattle.  That can wait till some other post.  But we should remember that it is another shoe waiting to drop.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

He left out rotational grazing and local processing in dairy stores at farmer's markets.  This would support coop owned year round farmer's markets that could compete with BIG box agriposionous food.  Franchise these operations co-investing with local farmer coops.  The brand name empowering local organic, transportation energy saving, healthy cem-free food.

Another better way to lead the company to growth would be to co-invest with farmers in wind, solar, and biogas energy systems to bolster farm income.  

Government should likewise support this with a 10 cent per kwh subsidy payment directly to the farmer for the clean electricty supplied to the grid.

Farmers themselves, with University ag extension services helping out, should shift to the much lower cost, earth friendly, rotational grazing dairying mode.  Even investing in the expensive items, like milking parlour and milk storage equipment with neighbors.

Small cheese making cooperative efforts seem to be profitable too.  With the Stonyfield marketing/franchising power to help these small businesses would get great local and regional outlets for their products.  It would encourage specialized, high quality food.

You guys need a development specialist for this.  you can pay me in Banilla yogurt.  I love that stuff.  I just need a lifetime supply, like Kramer's deal with the coffee company.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Far be it for me to suggest something so anti-capitalistic, but, wouldn't it make sense to raise yogurt prices?

I've been buying Stonyfield Yogurt for as long as I can remember; in fact, it was the first yogurt that I could tolerate, and still one of the few that I like.  And for as long as I can remember, yogurt has been about $1.  How can that be?  I'm guessing I started eating (and buying my own) yogurt in the early 90's.  I know, at some point, Stonyfield switched from an 8 oz to a 6 oz serving size, so I guess they made up 25% of price point right there, but still - it's been nearly 20 years.

Maybe my memory of the price in the past is faulty (see above 20 years) - but would it really impact market share significantly if Stonyfield raised yogurt prices by 5 cents or so?  I have no idea what commerical yogurt yield from milk is, but my home cheese making book has a recipe stating that 1 gallon of milk (with some inputs) yields about 1 gallon (or 128 ounces) of yogurt, or approximately 21, 6-ounce servings.  Therefore a mere 3 cent increase in the standard 6-ounce serving would cover the 60 cent deficit currently being felt by family farmers.

I'm sure this is overly simplistic - I have about as much idea of how to run a huge, multi-national yogurt company as I have about running an organic dairy farm.  But simplistic or not, would it not work?  Many people trust the Stonyfield brand, and certainly part of that trust must be garnered due to the commitment to the family farm.  Surely, if a price increase were instituted in response to increasing price pressure on the small family farmer (and marketed as such) the loss of Stonyfield customers could be minimized?

I think it is important to remember that we're comparing what has become a rather large corporate entity to smaller cooperative models. Stonyfield is, indeed, doing business about as usual, with some good modifications. They are a large entity with built-in apathy towards individuals, and I don't think this is a sustainable thing. In the end we can't keep ignoring one another, or the well-being of the animals that feed us. I guess what I was pointing out is that Stonyfield is dealing, about as ethically as possible, with the abstract aggregate of their dairy farmers, and Hirshfield writes about them as an aggregate. It's the rising tide lifts all boats concept. It doesn't work for all the boats though. Never has.

I would absolutely prefer to see a relocalized food economy that has a million different models. It'd be more secure, more interesting, and um...tastier, I imagine. It's really sad how the organic food movement has mostly just become another mega-agri-business sector.

I guess it's back to the garden for me.

I think that passing the added cost to pay farmers a living wage/milk price would fly if it were marketed that way kmp.  Excellent suggestion.

Higher prices for better food can be ameliorated by eating less and less costly protien, instead of eating costly chem meat every day, substitute organic eggs for instance.  And organic meat a couple times per week.

The total cost would actually be less and so would health care costs.

But organic definitely could compete on price too if and when some of the cost saving techniques like rotational grazing, investment in farm based renewable energy, and direct local processing/marketing are employed.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

From the first article:

"USDA Agricultural Research Service and the universities of Vermont, Maine, and Wisconsin indicate that the base price paid to family farmers in the Northeast in 2007 should have been $28.50 and needs to rise to $33 for 2008 rather than the current average of $27.50."

It looks like a 12 cent rise in the price of a 2 pound container of yogurt (around $3.50 now?)would get the farmers what they need?  If I figured right.  Consumers would pay that if it were explained to them.

Local production and sales that saves transportation costs and renewable energy could reduce costs more than that, far more.

How much could farmers shave from their cost by substituting healthier grass feeding for corn and grain?  Even organic corn is not a natural food for cows.  and it's very expensive.

Feed cost would seem to be around 7 cents per pound for regular dairying.  For organic is it double?  Substitue 3/4 grass feeding for the normal ration, and you get the cost saving needed too.

How about capital cost reduction from rotational grazing?  it would all seem to add up to a very competitive possibility for organic.  As feed and fuel prices rise, this type of operation would benefit.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Maybe one of the problems with grass feeding is "certifying" pasture land as organic - I'm not sure how that is done.  Otherwise you are simply buying organic grass instead of organic corn (if such a thing is possible).

Maybe a barter system with a local corn/grain producer?  Once a week you bring all the milk, cheese, etc. he can handle and he gives you a standing discount on feed prices?

I don't know; in an age when everyone seems obsessed with getting more and more money, I seem to spend time thinking about how to do away with the necessity for money.  Health insurance is the one big cost I can't seem to get around.

No need to get rid of money, we just need to stop it's use as a tool to manipulate every aspect of life into just a part of the corporate bottomline.

Certifying your own pasture is worthwhile, given the high price of certified feed.  163 bucks per ton for ground agribizz chem corn, 380 bucks per ton (and rising) for organic corn.  

Certification transition is problematic.  Stonyfield helps farmers with that financial risk, government ought to do it too.  Pay a 10 cent per kwh subsidy to farmers for each renewable kwh.  That would help.

Healthcare?  Well if you feed cows corn, even organic corn, they tend to get sick.  A weakened immune system breeds disease organisms.  Then antibiotics are applied.  Breeding stronger resistant disease organisms.

Rotational grazing is working to revive family farming here in Wisconsin.  wisconsin public tv has a great program on farmers who skipped a generation, became proffessionals, then went back to revive a farm that went out of business with the old methods.  They revived it with rotational grazinmg, and they get time off every winter.  unlike regular farmers.

Biogas energy from manure and farm waste is here too, farmers are selling power to the grid.  And producing organic fertilizer.

Money, capitalism, the will to financial happiness, financial prosperity and security, all work well together.  

Unless the economic system is manipulated for monopoly corporate bottomline considerations exclusively.  Excluding competition, innovation, and quality of life for we the people.

The family farm is the ancient birthplace of capitalism, real competitive small business capitalism.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Pastureland & cropland are deemed organic if they have been free of pesticide and synthetic fertilizers for a period or no less than three years.  Strangely, however, manure from animals that are not necessarily raised organically can be used on those fields.  So what?  How about porcines (one gene removed from humans, or something like that) that are fed hormones & antibiotics, whose waste is then used on the same fields?  Sounds unbelievable, doesn't it?  That's what I thought when I was told this information while touring the U. of NH's Organic Dairy farm in Lee, NH, the other day (whose milk, mind you, is sold to the Organic Valley Farms co-op from which Stonyfield buys their milk!).  The Animal Science Coordinator on site at the farm, who oversees a pig research center on site, was my source of info.  He said that he knows of no studies in which it has been proven that hormones & antibiotics pass through a pig's system to its waste.  Sound like a Planet mars joke?  When I know more, you'll all know more!

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart. Confucius, The Confucian Analects