It’s not good news for dairy farmers these days, whether they are organic or non-organic. In discussing cheese, the dairy farmers (if they are not also cheesemakers) often get left out of the discussion. Here are some links that will depress you:
3rd generation farmer on 150-year-old dairy farm forced to sell cows for slaughter
Organic family farms dump milk to protest consolidation by Big-Ag Organic dairies
Plunging prices wallop dairy farmers
Looks like Foster Farms will end up buying the Humboldt Creamery which had been 75% owned by farmers before the CEO embezzled the money away. Mind you, it’s good news that someone is buying it.
(We buy Rumiano cheese for our Jack, mild Cheddar, Pepper Jack and many other miscellaneous basic cheeses. We were lucky to have them be an early adopter of rBGH-free cheese and thus able to carry rBGH-free “people’s cheese” at a relatively low price. You can see in that last article that the Humboldt Creamery owes them over $1 million.)
Gordon ("Zola") Edgar 