The Rural Voice, 2002-05, Page 22RUNNING TO CATCH UP
The biggest problem in organic dairy production is finding enough
suppliers to meet the exploding demand. But supporters warn
against jumping on the bandwagon just for the money
Story by Keith Roulston
Amere eight years after organic
milk producers won the right
to keep their milk in a
separate pool, the demand for organic
milk is far outstripping the supply
and the drive is on now to convince
more farmers to make the switch to
organic production.
The growth is coming because
more and more people are making
the lifestyle decision that they want
to drink organic milk, says Terry
Ackerman, general manager of
OntarBio, the co-op that has been
distributing organic dairy products
under the Organic Meadow label
since 1996.
Where originally organic milk
was once marketed through health -
food stores, now main stream stores
are starting to sell organic product.
Ackerman gives as an example a
huge new Zehrs Market store in
Guelph. "We have to run two
truckloads a week in there," he says
of the demand. "Where did these
people come from? They came from
the surrounding subdivisions."
They're making a decision about
18 THE RURAL VOICE
,�..•rtt* x
''(9ty i7FA �'�.t�• � •r �� y
where their food is coming from,
Ackerman says. "We make no claims
for the benefits of organic milk," he
says. "We don't know if it adds on
second to your life."
Still, he says, the company does
get regular calls from people who
have tried organic milk for the first
time and rave about the flavour.
"Theysay this tastes like milk used
to taste," he says.
Whether from perception or actual
difference, there's no doubt the
market for organic dairy products is
booming. While Ontario's overall
demand for milk dropped one per
cent last year, OntarBio's organic
dairy sales increased 30 per cent. The
company now sells coast to coast and
recently moved to Guelph taking up
space in the Gencor building, in order
to be more central to the market.
Those kinds of moves illustrate
the divergence of philosophy that
have led Laurence Andres, one of the
pioneers of organic milk pooling, to
pull out of the co-op and start a new
production and marketing co-
operative, Harmony Organic Dairy
Products, with two other farmers.
From his point of view, Andres
says, the focus of OntarBio was
beginning to be too corporate. He
doesn't agree with national
distribution, he says, feeling regional
distribution is truer to the ideals of
the ecological farming movement of
"trying to inflict as little wounds as
possible" on the environment.
Burning hydrocarbon fuels to truck
milk across the country doesn't jibe
with ecological thinking, Andres
says. Originally wider distribution
made sense in order to offer organic
dairy products to people in areas of
the country where it hadn't been
available but now there are small
local processors springing up across
the country who could meet that
demand, he says.
It was Andres who made today's
organic boom possible with his
persistence in pursuing a separate
organic milk pool. He first
approached the Ontario Milk
Marketing Board in the 1980s, not
long after he came to the Tiverton
area from Switzerland in 1978. He