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Exploring the conventionalization of organic dairy: trends and counter-trends in upstate New York

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Abstract

Stakeholders in traditional dairy-producing states in the upper Midwest and Northeast hope that the boom in the organic milk market will offer family-scale dairy farms a means to escape the cost-price squeeze of the conventional food system. However, recent trends in organic dairy raise questions about whether organic dairy is conventionalizing, which is to say it is coming to resemble the conventional sector as shown in disparities of power in the value chain that pressure all participants to adopt more industrial practices. This paper reports the results of an exploratory qualitative study of whether and how the organic milk value chain in upstate New York is conventionalizing. Findings lend some support to the conventionalization hypothesis in that organic milk from the beginning has been produced, processed, and marketed as a commodity, and the federal regulations governing organic dairy have facilitated the replication of this commodity-based system. However, there is also evidence that some producers are responding to these pressures not by intensifying, but by going deeper into the alternative organic model, forging more direct and local relationships along the value chain and embracing principles of the organic movement.

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Abbreviations

USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture

NOP:

National Organic Program

NODPA:

Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance

NOSB:

National Organic Standards Board

FOOD:

Federation of Organic Dairy Farmers

MIRG:

Management Intensive Rotational Grazing

CROPP:

Coulee Region Organic Producer Pools

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the United University Professions Individual Development Award, the Scholarly Incentive Grant program of SUNY College at Brockport, and the Dr. Nuala McGann Drescher Leave Program sponsored jointly by the United University Professions and the State of New York. The author would like to thank Rick Welsh, Fay Benson, John Bobbe, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Sociology, SUNY College at Brockport, 350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY, 14470, USA

    Amy Guptill

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Guptill, A. Exploring the conventionalization of organic dairy: trends and counter-trends in upstate New York. Agric Hum Values 26, 29–42 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9179-0

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