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" is is a dairyman's dream," says Steve Getz, pool manager for Organic Valley's New England East Region, as he drives a country road running paral- lel to the 600-acre pasture of Vaughn Chase's farm in Mapleton, a small town in Aroostook County west of Presque Isle. "He's done haying for the year and is hoping not to have a killing frost for a few more weeks. Every day his cows are out grazing in the pasture is money in the bank for him. He's let his girls out and they're packing in all the lushest feed that's out there. ey're bagging up. ose cows are in excellent physical condition. eir udders are nice, tight and even. is is a great herd." In his role as business agent for the Wisconsin-based organic farmers' coop- erative milk pool in Maine, Getz has been quietly building a cluster of organic dairy farms in Maine's northernmost county who've contracted with Organic Valley to deliver their milk to the Stonyfi eld yogurt plant in Londonderry, N.H. ose eff orts are beginning to pay off : 10 Aroostook dairy farmers are now Organic Valley members, with four farms currently on the truck, fi ve in tran- sition to being certifi ed as "organic" and one just starting up. At a time when Maine's conventional dairy farms continue to fold — the Maine Milk Commission reports 252 dairy farms are operating in Maine this year, down from 271 in 2014 and 305 in 2010 — Organic Valley's organic dairy pool in Maine has grown from 33 dairy farms in July 2014 to 44 farms today. Not surprisingly, a big driver of that growth is the farmer-owned cooperative's abil- ity to pay reliable premium prices for organic milk — approximately $34 per hundredweight, with four additional quality incentives being available. at's almost double the $19.09 being paid for Class 1 conventional milk in Maine, according to the Maine Milk Commission's Oct. 15 price schedule. ere's a reason why both numbers are growing. Getz says demand for Organic Valley's milk is up 10% to 12%, with its Maine sales to Stonyfi eld being spurred by a U.S. yogurt market that is substantial and growing, with $9 billion in sales and average growth of 9% from 2010 through 2013. " ey want milk made from cows eating grass and they want it to be 'chemical-free,'" Getz says. " eir choice of these products is also based on their desire to support small family farms. We connect with consumers." Aroostook County initiative When Vaughn and Laura Chase's cows trek back to the milking barn from their mid-day grazing, they follow "laneways" the Chases installed with guidance from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. e laneways ensure that the cows never have to walk through mud to get to fresh grass and they facilitated the creation of 10 separate grazing areas, or paddocks, that enable to Chases to move their cows around on the farm's 600 acres of pasture to optimize grazing. "We take pasture management seri- ously," says Vaughn Chase, whose father started the farm in 1935 and began ship- ping milk commercially in 1955, the year Vaughn was born. He says their milk at that time essentially was "organic" because the farm didn't use pesticides or chemicals in its pastures. ey also rarely used antibiotics, largely because their grass-fed cows stayed healthy. Both practices made it an easy deci- sion for the Chases to seek offi cial U.S. Department of Agriculture certifi ca- tion as an "organic" dairy farm in 2007. "It was a no-brainer for us," he says. " e only thing hard for us at that time is that we didn't have a market." Initially that problem seemed to be solved in 2010 when MOO Milk was created as a partially farmer- owned collaborative marketing its own Maine-branded organic milk for higher prices than conventional milk. But the company struggled and eventually folded in July 2014, when processing equipment broke down and could no longer meet the company's needs. at left the Chases and 11 other MOO Milk dairy farmers scrambling to fi nd new markets for their milk. Less than a month after MOO Milk's closure, Organic Valley had signed up six MOO Milk farmers — including two Aroostook dairy farms, the Chases' 100-cow farm in Mapleton and Tom Drew's H.B. Farms in Woodland, just west of Caribou. For Vaughn Chase, the fact that Organic Valley is a farmer-owned cooperative representing 1,800 farmers in 36 states gives him confi dence its Aroostook County initiative is sustainable. "I love it. I always said Organic Valley would be my pick of a company to be with," he says. " at's a really nicely run company that's thinking of farmers all the time. is fall they gave us a dollar raise [per hundredweight of milk]. It's a stable market. It's a paycheck you can count on week after week." P H O T O / JA M E S M C C A R T H Y Milk run to The County Organic Valley goes far afield to link dairy farms to markets B y J a m e s M c C a r t h y » C O N T I N U E D F R O M C O V E R VO L . X X I N O. X X V N OV E M B E R 2 , 2 0 1 5 22 Organic Valley One Organic Way, La Farge, Wisc. Founded: 1988 CEO: George Siemon Services: Farmer-owned cooperative of 1,800 farmers in 36 states, producing a variety of organic foods, including milk, eggs and produce. Employees: 800 Sales: $972 million in 2014, up 4.57% from $930 million in 2013 Contact: 888-444-6455 www.organicvalley.coop Steve Getz, pool manager for Organic Valley's New England East Region, tips his cap during a conversation with Vaughn Chase in the milking barn of Chase Organic Dairy Farm in Mapleton. T R A N S P O R TAT I O N / I N F R A S T R U C T U R E F O C U S

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