Cows Unite for Organic Dairy

The cam­paign was launched by a famil­iar name in organic dairy products—Organic Valley—approaching a grim sub­ject with a bit of humor to get the point across. “What we tried to do with that cam­paign was to take what we con­sider a very seri­ous topic—grazing and confinement—and present it in a play­ful and fun way,” Organic Valley chief mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive Theresa Marquez told Organic Connections. “And I think that we achieved it.”

Behind the Scenes

The prob­lem being exposed in these humor­ous spots—and one which Organic Valley is tak­ing great strides in solving—is the treat­ment of milk cows in today’s fac­tory dairy farms.

When I myself was a child (longer ago than I care to admit), I vividly recall rid­ing through the coun­try­side in the back of my par­ents’ car, see­ing cows graz­ing on hill­sides and in pas­tures. As time went by and I grew older, it was a sight seen less and less, until today, when it has all but disappeared.

This is because cows in today’s indus­trial dairy sys­tems are kept closely con­fined and given cheap corn feed that is laced with antibi­otics to pre­vent the cows from becom­ing ill in such cramped con­di­tions and spread­ing dis­ease. Cows are also given growth hor­mones as well as hor­mones to cause them to reproduce.

What have also dis­ap­peared are the small, family-owned cream­eries that used to help sup­port the small farmer. “There used to be a sweet lit­tle sys­tem of small farm­ers who brought their milk into the local cream­ery, and the cream­ery made milk, but­ter, cream and other prod­ucts,” Marquez explained. “The whole sys­tem is not in exis­tence any­more. Almost all of the small cream­eries have closed. The small farms have been replaced by big con­fine­ment farms that have five, eight or twelve thou­sand cows. It’s a lot eas­ier to back up a big milk truck with a tap on it and just fill it at one farm and take it away to a giant plant. We’ve moved from this model of truly local prod­uct to huge farms and huge production.”

Going Organic

In stark con­trast, the biggest farm in the Organic Valley co-op is a thou­sand cows—and accord­ing to Marquez, that one “kind of crept up on us.” Small farms are the company’s focus.

Interestingly, Organic Valley has its roots in a nation­wide farm­ing crisis.

“In 1988, the price of milk bot­tomed out,” Marquez recounted. “Thousands of farm­ers lost their liveli­hoods, and a bunch of farm­ers in Wisconsin looked at each other and said, ‘Well, seems like we’re going out of busi­ness. What can we do?’”

At the time, there was no organic milk, so the farm­ers decided to try pro­duc­ing organic dairy prod­ucts. The inter­est­ing thing was some of them were halfway there. “Out of neces­sity, a lot of them were already prac­ti­cally organic,” said Marquez. “They couldn’t afford pes­ti­cides and a lot of the ‘tools’ used in con­ven­tional farming.”

Even though the farm­ers them­selves were very sus­pi­cious of coop­er­a­tives, hav­ing been burned by them in the past, they decided to form one—although it was struc­tured dif­fer­ently. The pri­mary dif­fer­ence was that the coop­er­a­tive would not change the price of milk unless the farm­ers were involved. “We do not dic­tate our pric­ing to the farm­ers,” said Marquez. “We, the man­age­ment, with the farm­ers, deter­mine what the pay price is. In this way, we’ve been able to hold to a good, strong pay price and keep them alive, farm­ing.” Hence the mis­sion of Organic Valley is multi-fold: to not only bring extremely high qual­ity diary prod­ucts to the con­sumer but pro­tect rural com­mu­ni­ties and farm­ing in the United States.

Thus was formed the first co-op that even­tu­ally became Organic Valley. While Organic Valley is the brand name, the orga­ni­za­tion of co-op farm­ers who pro­duce the company’s prod­ucts is called CROPP (an abbre­vi­a­tion for Cooperative Regions of Organic Producer Pools).

“We pool the prod­ucts in a region,” Marquez said. “Each region elects a rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and that rep­re­sen­ta­tive becomes part of our Diary Executives Committee. We have 60 pools around the United States, so we have 60 peo­ple who gather every month with the CEO. All our farm­ers are very, very involved.”

The Organic Valley Model

Strict require­ments are main­tained for Organic Valley farm­ers. Cows must be pas­tured, grass fed, and not given antibi­otics, hor­mones or other chem­i­cals reg­u­larly found in fac­tory farms. These require­ments are audited by Organic Valley them­selves through rep­re­sen­ta­tives who reg­u­larly visit farms, check for cows in pas­ture, and inspect the ani­mals for health. The farms are also audited for the National Organic Program by a qual­i­fied USDA-accredited cer­ti­fi­ca­tion organization.

The com­pany has a team of vet­eri­nar­i­ans as well that assist farm­ers in mak­ing the tran­si­tion to fully organic, healthy cows. Once they make that tran­si­tion, the cows become quite strong. “A lot of these vets are amazed to see just how healthy organic cows are,” Marquez related. “One of our vets told me a story about run­ning into a farmer he hadn’t seen in a cou­ple years, and hav­ing thought the farmer had per­haps been using another vet. ‘No,’ the farmer told him, ‘I haven’t traded vets. I just haven’t needed you!’ You hear that a lot. Organic cows are very healthy.”

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing much health­ier milk, organic cows also emit fewer harm­ful green­house gases into the atmos­phere. “If you feed cows a larger per­cent­age of what are called oily grasses—such as flax and alfalfa—they burp less,” Marquez explained. “A huge per­cent­age of methane gas comes from burp­ing, and we have recently dis­cov­ered that cows eat­ing these grasses burp 50 per­cent less.”

The cows, in fact, are so healthy that the USDA recently awarded Organic Valley, in con­junc­tion with some other orga­ni­za­tions, $1.2 mil­lion to con­duct a for­mal three-year study on the health of organic dairy cows com­pared with non-organic.

Spread the Word

As our read­ers, you are well aware of the value of prod­ucts such as those pro­duced by Organic Valley. The best pos­si­ble adver­tis­ing these prod­ucts can receive right now is word of mouth, since the small organic farms can­not com­pete with the giant man­u­fac­tur­ers for adver­tis­ing and media cov­er­age. So, spread the word! It’s a “grass-roots” move­ment in more ways than one.

You can also tell peo­ple to watch the “Cows Unite” videos at www.cowsunite.org—or send them over to find out more about Organic Valley and their prod­ucts at www.organicvalley.coop.