Feeling the Pinch, Hudson Valley Dairy Farmers Create Local Brand

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The New York Sun

PLEASANT VALLEY — It’s tough to be a dairy farmer right now. Business costs are soaring and wholesale milk prices are low.

It can be even tougher to raise cows on prime real estate in the mid-Hudson Valley, where many old dairy farms have been sliced up to make way for subdivisions with $400,000 homes.

“This is the high-rent district, no doubt about it,” farmer Sam Simon said, standing in his barn as his milking cows chomped on hay. “But you cannot deny the farmer who has worked for 50 years the fruit of his labor.”

Mr. Simon’s solution to the price pinch is Hudson Valley Fresh, a high-quality milk brand that usually travels less than 35 miles to counter from cow. Consumers willing to pay a bit more get to buy local, and participating farmers fetch a higher price for their milk. Farmers in populated pockets of the Northeast are creating similar local brands to boost income.

“We were basically processing a faceless product, the truck comes and takes it away,” one of the family farmers contributing to the Farmer’s Cow in Connecticut, Robin Chesmer, said. “We’re giving an identity to our milk, giving people a reason to buy our milk.”

Wholesale prices dairy farmers receive under the government regulatory structure have dropped in recent years. But fuel and feed cost more. Many farmers say it costs them more to produce milk than the price they’re getting.

Taxes and operating costs can run especially high in the mid-Hudson Valley areas like Dutchess County, which has been steadily losing its sleepy, rural flavor as New York City’s suburbs push out.

The county has been losing dairy farms at a faster clip than the state, dropping to 45 from 67 from 1997–2002, according to federal statistics. There are no county-level records beyond 2002, but Mr. Simon now counts 23.

Mr. Simon’s farm, 75 miles north of Manhattan, lies in a remaining rural pocket among the county’s strip malls and subdivisions. He bought the white-barned spread toward the end of his 22-year career as an orthopedic surgeon, wanting to get back to the work he loved since he was a kid growing up on a dairy farm. Mr. Simon, 60, always knew he’d lose money milking around 50 cows, but he worried about local farmers without the financial padding he enjoyed.

He helped start Hudson Valley Fresh, under which five local dairy farms started segregating out milk in May 2005 that normally would be marketed by their multistate milk cooperative, Agri-Mark.

Sold in containers with a minimalist green “Hudson Valley Fresh” label, the milk is free of recombinant bovine growth hormone, a substance some farmers use to boost milk production. The milk is not certified organic, but it has somatic cell counts well below the federal guidelines. Mr. Simon said cell count is an indicator of a healthy herd, and thus milk quality.

A half gallon of Hudson Valley Fresh costs around $3, competing with half-gallons that retail around $1.80. But enough people are buying the product to sustain 1,350 gallons a week. Mr. Simon said the niche product does well here thanks to a market heavy on suburban parents and city dwellers coming up to weekend homes.


The New York Sun

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