Robin McDermott is a co-founder of the Mad River Valley Localvore Project. She and her husband, Ray, operate their business, QualityTrainingPortal, from their home in Waitsfield, where they also grow much of their own food. 

“Milk Prices Crash” read the headlines in the Burlington Free Press on January 31, 2009.  The article went on to report that the February price for Class I Milk (that is fluid milk) dropped to $10.72 from $15.74 in January.  That is more than a 31-percent decrease from the price just a month earlier.     

You don’t have to be a farmer to understand the devastating impact this five-year low in milk prices will have on Vermont farms.  How can you keep a business afloat that already operates on wafer-thin margins when your revenues are cut by nearly a third but the costs of running the business – feed, fuel, labor, etc. – remain the same (or higher) as they have been in the past?    

In the Burlington Free Press article, Robert Wellington, a vice-president at Agri-Mark predicted that by the spring farmers will be getting just $1 for each gallon of milk that they had gotten $1.99 for in August of 2007.  Given that it costs farmers in the New England region about $1.55 to produce a gallon of milk, we will no doubt be losing more dairy farms in Vermont this year.   

I checked in with Addison County Organic Dairy farmer Mike Eastman to get his read on the situation.  He milks a small herd of about 40 cows and supplies CROPP, which is the cooperative for Organic Valley, with his milk.       

My question for Mike was, what can I, a milk-drinking, cheese-eating, yogurt-loving person do to help Vermont dairy farms during this difficult period?  Interestingly, one of Mike’s ideas doesn’t take federal or state money and could actually increase the overall demand for milk.  Mike suggests that if farms were allowed to sell more raw milk AND deliver that milk to their customers, it could have a positive effect on the problems facing the dairy industry in Vermont.   

How could this be?   

First, a relatively small farmer like Mike could reduce the size of his herd from 40 to 10 cows.  If he was able to sell all of his milk directly to the public, he would be able to get $6 to $8 a gallon for the same milk that he currently gets a little more than $2 a gallon for from his organic co-op.  Obviously, his costs would be lower and he wouldn’t have to work as hard because he would be managing a much smaller herd.   

The second point Mike made was that his milk would now be taken out of the over-supplied commodity market, and perhaps there would be a better balance between the demand for milk and the supply.   

A third benefit is that the entry cost to get into dairy farming could be much lower and more affordable because you could conceivably start a business with a very small herd of cows and still make a living from it.  Over time, this could actually mean an increase and not a decrease in the number of family-sized dairy farms in Vermont.   

Mike argues that by allowing more raw milk to be sold by farms, plus the convenience of a milk-delivery service for people who don’t want to travel to a farm to get their milk, the demand for dairy would actually increase.  From Mike’s experience, people who start drinking raw milk often were not milk drinkers anyway. I can attest to that myself.  So, instead of taking away from the existing milk sales in stores, he theorizes that increased raw milk availability could actually create a whole new market of milk drinkers.     

Unfortunately Vermont regulations are preventing Mike and other small dairy farmers from selling more the 50 quarts of raw milk per day and delivery is strictly prohibited.  But it doesn’t have to be that way!     

I am hoping that this year’s budget squeeze will encourage the Vermont Agency of Agriculture to think beyond mobile processing units and other expensive “solutions” that are not affordable in today’s economy. I believe that there are more creative solutions than money can buy.  If legislators and regulators can keep an open mind when they ask themselves, “What can we do to help Vermont farms that doesn’t cost anything?” they will find a huge number of opportunities for Vermont farmers that will also bring the citizens of the state more healthy and local food options. 

A better and more convenient supply of raw milk is just one of the many possibilities.