ARE FARMERS WILLING TO SELL OUTSIDE OF CO-OPS, BECOME CERTIFIED ORGANIC, OR GRAZE THEIR COWS?

At the end of April I defended my master’s thesis. I spent 18 months collecting data from Northeastern dairy farmers. While my peers at Miner Institute worked on dairy nutrition research, studying the role of fiber in a cow’s diet, or mineral metabolism in the transition period, I interviewed 25 farmers across the region.

In these interviews, I asked farmers to discuss their values, connections to their community, and attitudes to adoption of three alternative management practices.

The idea for this research came from a 2019 Vermont Farm to Plate brief that described the current state of the dairy industry in Vermont, and three alternative management practices that Vermont and Northeastern dairy farmers were well-placed to take advantage of. These practices - -selling into alternative milk markets, becoming certified organic, and grazing -- were selected for their ability to gain more value for the farmer, perceived demand from consumers, and availability of grazing land. While the brief included well-founded reasonings for their selection of these management practices, I became interested in how the possible adoption of these practices would play out with farmers. The team that authored this brief also leads the Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center, a USDA funded grant awarding group that helps connect dairy farmers from Maine to Maryland with funding, education, and technical services.

The goal of this research was to more deeply understand the values, ideals, and norms that shape farmer decision-making, and how farmers absorb outside opinion in their adoption of alternative management practices. This research involved finding a diverse group of farms and farmers, intentionally interviewing farmers who were as different from each other as possible. Farms varied in size from 45 to 10,000 acres, with 29 to over 2,000 lactating cows. Farmers varied in age from 22 to 65 years old, with 13 female and 12 male participants. Thirteen farms sold exclusively to co-ops, nine sold at least some milk on the value-added market and the rest to a co-op, and three sold all of their milk on the value-added market. Farms were located in Maine (5), Rhode Island (1), Vermont (6), New York (8), and Pennsylvania (5).

Unsurprisingly, farmers’ willingness to adopt any of the three alternative management practices was based in their practical ability to apply them. For example, infrastructure barriers to entering the value-added market and land availability barriers to grazing were referenced. Farmers also described the role of their personal values in their adoption of these practices. One conventional farmer said about organic certification and antibiotic use, “On some level, it’s not right for the animals. If your child was sick, you would take them to the doctor and give antibiotics”. On the other hand, an organic farmer said, “It feels like being an organic farmer is…my identity rather than just being a farmer”. Practical and values-based reasoning was a key component to farmers’ explanation of their chosen practices.

However, analysis of farmers’ self-descriptions revealed deeper motivations in their decision making. Farmers identified the importance of community connection, education, and local food in the face of ethical and sustainability criticism. Within their description of these factors, farmers revealed a need for dairy products to be more highly valued socially and economically. Farmers saw their contributions to the community through experiential learning like farm tours or the Adopt a Cow program, and contribution to local food availability as a justification for their existence, and a way to outweigh potential negativities of dairy farming.

Farmers also described their frustrations within the overlapping intricacies of dairy marketing, advertising, and education, and how the economic goals of the industry do not necessarily align with the practical and ethical goals of farmers. One farmer said, “(The co-op’s) pictures are very bucolic…and it’s misleading…because marketing and educating are very different things”. Here, this farmer acknowledged that marketing grazing practices may work well for their co-op to gain consumer acceptance, but that this portrayal of farming may damage long term consumer trust and view of the industry. Therefore, farmers described a desire to be more involved in the education of the public on dairy farming realities.

Unlike quantitative research, which is performed to statistically accept or reject a hypothesis based, qualitative research is done to expand our understanding of a group and give a voice to those who might not always be heard. In this case, these findings can help agricultural researchers, advocates, service providers, legislators and more to understand how farmers internalize pressures when considering farm management changes. People may take from this research that, while these farmers largely made practical and values-based decisions, farmers absorb and reflect consumer and public pressure to adapt to sustainability concerns, and that farmers have a deep desire for their cultural, economic, and nutritional contributions to their communities to be more highly valued.

— Bridget Craig

bcraig@whminer.com