84 More Farms Join Cooperative and We Can’t Wait to Welcome More

Organic Valley is ecstatic. We tallied it up, and last year, 84 organic family farms joined the co-op! We are just as excited about 2024.

Dozens of new family farms also became members of our co-op the year before — we are not stopping there. Nope.

Organic Valley farmers are paid a stable pay price, determined by farmers, which is welcome news in a time of uncertainty for family farms.

Of the newest 84 farms, 26 are in Pennsylvania, 22 in New York, a dozen in Wisconsin, and others in Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Vermont.

These farms, like all Organic Valley farms, must adhere to strict animal care standards and be certified organic.

Supporting and protecting small family farms is core to Organic Valley, a cooperative borne out of the farm crisis of the 1980s. This is when a group of Wisconsin farmers got together to find a way to provide a stable pay price to organic farmers who produced food without the use of harsh chemicals.

There were seven founding farmers who got the co-op rolling in 1988, but it also took a community and consumers like you who care about food and farming. Now, there are more than 1,600 Organic Valley farms across the country. None of that happens without your purchase of organic food.

In the last 10 years, more than 100,000 U.S. farms have been lost, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Organic Valley isn’t going to sit idly by and watch this happen. In 2022, when two companies decided they wouldn’t renew milk contracts at small organic farms, leaving them nowhere to market their milk, Organic Valley reached out. Fifty of those farms joined the co-op.

And it happened again in 2022 ― another company left its farmers high and dry. Seventeen Pennsylvania farmers called to tell us their milk companies gave them five days to find a place to ship their milk. The co-op got to work. Organic Valley representatives visited the farms to meet the families and ensure their practices met our quality standards. We offered membership to nearly a dozen of those farms.

Organic Valley farmers, founders and employees are committed to saving family farms, which translates to protecting organic farmland in the U.S. and providing nutritious, delicious products for you and your friends and family. Good food comes from good, organic family farms.

From seven farmers to 1,600 farmers three decades later, Organic Valley continues to lead the comeback of the American family farm. Welcome to the new year and new opportunities for family farms.