Rebuilding America: One Family Farm At A Time

A few years ago, you'd be hard pressed to find any signs of a future for this small dairy. But today it's a different story - a story the owners are excited to share.

David Roberts and his wife Kayla live adjacent to their dairy near Preston, Idaho. It's a beautiful rural setting that is beginning to feel development pressure from large urban areas in Utah.

David and Kayla, third-generation dairy farmers, are in partnership with David's parents, Ellis and Mary Jo. In the past, the Roberts dairy, like other dairies, was struggling to hang on. Conventional milk prices were volatile and often at unsustainable levels. Roberts recalls they had to do something.

Becoming organically certified and selling milk into the organic market seemed like the right thing to do. Over the ensuing five years, David and Kayla contacted every major organic milk distributor in the United States, while hosting meetings with other local dairy families to get them to commit to raise milk organically.

"It was a classic catch 22 - which comes first the chicken or the egg?" Roberts said. "We had a tough time getting other local dairy families to commit without a commitment from an organic distributor, and vice versa."

After hundreds of telephone calls and countless meetings over the course of five years, their dream became a reality. In February, 2006, the Roberts, along with five other family dairies in the area, made their first shipment of organic milk under the Organic Valley Family of Farms label. Their milk now goes to a creamery in the region to make organic cheese.

Roberts explains that there is so much interest in what they did that, potentially the number of family dairies shipping organic milk to Organic Valley Family of Farms, will increase to roughly 20 dairies.

The moment of victory was not without tense situations. Roberts recalls that in the final hours of negotiation, George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley Family of Farms, came to personally visit them, a rather unusual event recalls Roberts. Roberts concerns were that Organic Valley Family of Farms could take the easy route and contract with one large dairy for the same volume of milk they would get from the many small dairies in his area. Roberts recalls that while sitting at their kitchen table, Siemon stated Organic Valley Family of Farms would rather have 10 family farms shipping milk to them than one large dairy.

Siemon followed through on his word, and the Roberts became part of the Organic Valley Family of Farms.

To learn more, read the full article in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Touch the Soil™ magazine.