‘Keep Local Farms’ Program Launched

Initiative Will Provide Funds Directly to Dairy Farmers in the Northeast

Steve Taylor
New England Correspondent

LANDAFF, N.H. — An idea hatched five years ago to try to capitalize on consumer interest in locally produced foods in order to gain some extra income for New England dairy farmers has finally gotten off the ground.

“Keep Local Farms” is the name of the initiative, and its ultimate goal is to build a brand identification for New England-produced milk that will motivate consumers to pay a little extra at the supermarket that will end up putting some money in the pockets of the region’s hard-pressed dairy farmers.

Debra Erb, a Landaff, N.H., dairy farmer, cheese producer and milk cooperative director, explains that Keep Local Farms aims to be an umbrella that will have both an educational and a financial dimension. It has a website, keeplocalfarms.org, up and running, offering information for consumers about milk and the dairy industry in the region.

The website was rolled out two weeks ago at joint press conference staged by the commissioners of agriculture of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, and it recorded more than 800 hits in its first week of operation.

On the financial side, Keep Local Farms has signed up the University of Vermont to contribute 10 cents per pint of milk served in its dining halls, and is in negotiations for similar arrangements at the University of New Hampshire and Yale University. Two hospitals have joined, and talks are in progress with several other institutions.

A bigger goal is to convince the first supermarket chain to come on board and commit to placing a Keep Local Farms logo on milk labels and to collect and remit a small premium to the program’s treasury.

“Our dream is to have some money to send back to farmers by next year,” Erb says, “but we realize this is new and that it’s going to take a lot of work.”

Sponsors of the Keep Local Farms effort are the New England Dairy Promotion Board, the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council and New England Family Farms Cooperative. New England Family Farms has pulled together the Agri-Mark, St. Albans, Dairylea and Dairy Farmers of America cooperatives. About 75 percent of New England’s dairy farms are represented through their cooperatives, and efforts are underway to bring in independent producers to get the entire body of approximately 1,800 producers in the six-state region participating.

Individual independent farmers can join for $5, while coop members are enrolled en masse.

The Vermont Agency of Agriculture is serving as home base for Keep Local Farms, with Diane Bothfeld, state dairy policy coordinator, acting as point person.

“It is recognized that this thing needs to be voluntary, and that these are tough times for farmers. What it’s trying to do is get little of that consumer dollar from people who will be willing to pay a little more if they know it is going directly to the farmer,” Bothfeld says.

The idea of a program to promote a regional identity for milk and dairy products was hatched by Bob Wellington, economist and senior vice president of Agri-Mark, and Walter Gladstone, operator of a 1,000-cow dairy farm in Fairlee, Vt., along with a small group of other Agri-Mark members. It floundered until it was taken under the wing of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and began to received some support from state milk promotion funds.

“We’re stressing a New England footprint for this, but if it works perhaps it could go elsewhere,” Erb muses.

For more information on the Keep Local Farms program please visit keeplocalfarms.org or call 877-388-7381. Keep Local Farms is a partnership between the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council, the New England Family Dairy Farm Cooperative with Cooperative Development Institute, and the New England Dairy Promotion Board.