Dairy Cows in Cabot, Vermont (photo by Tara, courtesy of morguefile.com)

There’s more good news for those who want healthier and more sustainable food. The huge numbers of parents who want their children to get the health benefits of milk without exposing them to the dangers of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) and the antibiotics fed to cows in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), have contributed mightily to organic dairy farming enjoying quite a boom in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently published a report stating, “Between 2000 and 2005, the number of certified organic milk cows on U.S. farms increased by an annual average of 25%, from 38,000 to more than 86,000.”

According to the report, that makes organic milk one of “the fastest growing segments of organic agriculture in the United States in recent years.” And organic agriculture in itself is one of the fastest growing segments of all farming in the U.S., having enjoyed an annual growth rate of 20% for many years. It seems reasonable that consumer demand and the example of so many farmers having already successfully converted their dairy operations to organic, the trend will continue for the foreseeable future.

The report published by the USDA entitled, Characteristics, Costs, and Issues for Organic Dairy Farming, was authored by William D. McBride and Catherine Greene. They found the following when comparing organic and conventional dairies:

• Organic dairies are smaller than conventional dairies (82 cows compared with 156 cows).

• Organic dairies produce about 30 percent less milk per cow than conventional dairies (13,601 pounds per organic cow compared with 18,983 pounds per conventional cow).

• Organic dairies are more often located in the Northeast and Upper Midwest than are conventional dairies (86 percent compared with 65 percent).

• Organic dairies use more pasture-based feeding, where more than 50 percent of dairy forage fed is from pasture during grazing months, than conventional dairies (63 percent compared with 18 percent).

• Pasture-based organic dairies’ total economic costs were about $4 per cwt higher than conventional pasture-based dairies, much lower than the average price premium for organic milk in 2005.

Consumers appear to be comfortable paying a premium for organic milk in order to avoid the health risks of conventionally produced milk from factory farms. As our friend Sarah Alexander at Food & Water Watch wrote this past summer, “…the documented increase of infections in dairy cows injected with rBGH…necessitates increased use of antibiotics…and there are ongoing questions about links to cancer…most of the industrialized countries in the world have banned this hormone.”

Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization based in Washington, D.C. This past August the organization launched a campaign to get milk produced with artificial hormones out of schools once and for all, and delivered more than 25,000 petitions to members of Congress asking them to clarify that schools have the option to purchase rBGH-free milk or organic milk.

If you’d like to take action to get rBGH-free milk into your local school go to: Food & Water Watch

If you’d like to read the report published by the USDA and cited above in its entirety go to: Characteristics, Costs, and Issues for Organic Dairy Farming

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