![]() ![]() “Growing transportation and operational challenges in the dairy industry, particularly in the northeast, led to this difficult decision,” Danone North America said in a statement. In 2017, that number had shrunk to 286, according to data from the U.S. In 1954, there were 4,578 dairy producers in Maine. ![]() ![]() The total number of dairy producers has declined dramatically over the last seven decades. While the 79 organic dairy farms represent roughly 30 percent of the total number of dairy farmers in Maine, they account for only about 6 percent of the milk produced. The loss of a major buyer also is the latest blow to a broader Maine dairy industry that has been contracting for decades. The last large sloughing by corporate milk buyers was in 2018, when seven organic producers had contracts terminated, according to the report. There is no organic milk processing and packaging plant in Maine, meaning all organic milk produced here has to be trucked out of state, making Maine’s organic dairy farmers more vulnerable to corporate cost-cutting, according Annie Watson, president of the Maine Organic Milk Producers, who was interviewed for a January 2020 dairy sector report by the Maine Farmland Trust. Organic dairy in Maine, while award-winning for its quality, is far less efficient than traditional methods. “It’s not that the small farmer can’t make it nowadays, but they just don’t want to pick you up.”ĭriving the shift is a tightening market for organic products, the increased popularity of non-milk alternatives, along with the consolidation of dairy farms and the rise of massive organic milk operations in the West and Midwest that dwarf New England farms, making the higher associated costs here less attractive on paper. His son, Cliff Bragg, now runs Bragg Homestead in Sidney, where they have 50 milk cows. Most perplexing, Webber said, was that Horizon had recently required that all of its Maine producers go through an extensive audit and documentation process for their operations, only to dump them a few weeks later.Īnother lifelong dairy farmer, Wayne Bragg, 74, said the reason for the shift to buying milk from larger farms is simple. The decision by Danone illustrates an ongoing inflection point for the organic dairy industry, where converging forces of slowing demand, increased costs and corporate consolidation continue to squeeze out smaller producers.įarmers may be forced to sell their herds or leave farming entirely, said Lauren Webber, 29, who along with her husband, Sam, operates the SamLaurEL Farm of about 50 milk cows on nearly 100 acres in Chesterville, northeast of Livermore Falls. The result could be catastrophic for the more than a dozen farm families in Maine, who represent about 17 percent of the roughly 79 organic dairy farmers in the state, according to a 2017 agricultural census. While Danone is not the only buyer of Maine organic milk, the dairy market is too tight for the region’s other processors to quickly or easily absorb new customers, farmers and regional advocates say. ![]()
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