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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Local: The Route to Survival for FamilyFarmers

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  • From: "Barbara Fischer" <cen12205@centurytel.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Local: The Route to Survival for FamilyFarmers
  • Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:37:12 -0600

You are lucky....most states will not allow that.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Coylie Ries" <sassyniowa@iowatelecom.net>
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
<livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Local: The Route to Survival for
FamilyFarmers


> In the Des Moines, Iowa area, there is a small farm that is selling its
> milk directly to the area grocery stores, and that includes the larger
> stores such as Hy-Vee and Dahls.
> They sell it in the old-fashioned milk bottles were delivered to your
> door and the bottles are returnable. Everyone I know who has tried the
> milk, just loves it! And spend the extra money to get it. They will
> even wait in line longer to return the bottles! (Here in Iowa, we have
> 5cent return on all pop cans and bottles, so we turn them in here back
> to where we bought them in the first place.)
> The whole milk is just that, straight milk with the cream still on the
> top! I believe they are doing very, very well with their product.
> Sassy
> >
> > Local: The Route to Survival for Family Farmers
> > September 21, 2004 Tuesday
> > http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/local092804.cfm
> > Sell in Bulk, Lose Farm. Sell Locally, and Watch Revenues Grow.
> > By KEITH SCHNEIDER.
> >
> > Keith Schneider, a former New York Times reporter, is deputy director
> > of
> > the Michigan Land Use Institute.
> >
> > ONE of the truly good-news stories in American agriculture, and one
> > with
> > meaning for small businesses of all kinds, is what's happening on
> > Tyler
> > Road here at the Shetler Family Dairy.
> >
> > Not that long ago, George and Sally Shetler were small fry in an
> > industry
> > dominated by big players, producers of a bulk commodity in which
> > prices
> > essentially had not budged for 20 years. Continuing to supply the
> > conventional fluid milk market, the Shetlers concluded, would take
> > them
> > down the same bankruptcy path that the Department of Agriculture says
> > claimed almost 400 farms a week from 1974 to the mid-1990's, most of
> > them
> > small.
> >
> > So in 1995, the Shetlers decided to try a more entrepreneurial
> > approach. If
> > the markets they could reach through conventional channels were
> > unsatisfactory, what new market could they tap?
> >
> > The one right around them, as it turned out -- bottling and delivering
> > their milk directly to stores in Traverse City, 25 miles away, the
> > center
> > of a five-county region with 165,000 residents and growing faster than
> > almost any place in the Midwest.
> >
> > The couple, who raised five children in a 90-year-old farmhouse with
> > one
> > bathroom and a lot of wallpaper with cows, sent a survey to local
> > markets
> > and learned that proprietors were eager to sell fresh food produced by
> > local growers. They then sat at their dining table and wrote a
> > straightforward business plan on one page of unlined white paper --
> > ''Start
> > small within 1995. Action to be taken: Pray!!'' -- that accurately
> > described the fast-growing business they and several of their children
> > operate.
> >
> > Today, the milk from its 38 cows is bottled in a $140,000
> > microcreamery the
> > family built and stocked with used equipment. The dairy ships 1,300
> > gallons
> > of milk and dairy products twice a week to 50 stores in the Grand
> > Traverse
> > region. Their truck has a set of Texas longhorns bolted to the roof of
> > the
> > cab, a black-and-white Holstein pattern and a slogan: ''From Moo to
> > You.''
> >
> > The result? Revenues have grown fourfold, and the farm now has seven
> > employees.
> >
> > ''You know what this has done for us? Every other weekend now I get
> > off and
> > don't have to milk,'' said Mr. Shetler, 53, who bought his 180-acre
> > farm 25
> > years ago.
> >
>
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