Organic dairy farmer believes healthy crops and animals make for healthy people

LEROY MEYER of the Fort Loramie area in Shelby County feeds his dairy cows hay raised with­out ben­e­fit of
pes­ti­cides or other chem­i­cals. Meyer moved to organic dairy farm­ing due to health con­cerns asso­ci­ated with
tra­di­tional com­mer­cial dairy meth­ods. SDN Photo/ELAINE SCHWELLER-SNYDER

BY ELAINE SCHWELLER-SNYDER

FORT LORAMIE — Grow­ing up on a dairy farm, Leroy Meyer of Fort Loramie learned about milk­ing cows through hands-on expe­ri­ence at a young age. Classes at Fort Loramie High School and the Joint Voca­tional School helped him with record keep­ing and other aspects of the dairy busi­ness, but the pri­mary teacher who pre­pared him for his future was his dad.

Meyer and his wife Rose have their own farm now, just down the road from where he grew up with six broth­ers and four sis­ters. Three of his broth­ers have dairy farms too. “All my sib­lings live nearby,” said Meyer. “It is nice to be close to fam­ily and although we aren’t all in the dairy busi­ness, we all cer­tainly under­stand what it is all about because we grew up on the farm.”

As Meyer began farm­ing in the 1990’s, increas­ing health con­cerns about com­mer­cial dairy meth­ods were push­ing some farm­ers to explore organic. This enlight­ened con­sumer aware­ness was dri­ven by sev­eral fac­tors, includ­ing the 1994 devel­op­ment of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied bovine growth hor­mone; corn, soy­bean, and other crops treated with syn­thetic pes­ti­cides being fed to live­stock; and greater use of syn­thetic med­ica­tions for ani­mals includ­ing hor­mones, antibi­otics, and steroids. (www.extension.org)

Today, organic dairy has joined organic fruits, veg­eta­bles, grains, and meat in a grow­ing move­ment built on the fun­da­men­tal belief that healthy soils lead to healthy crops, healthy ani­mals, healthy peo­ple, and a healthy planet.

For Meyer, the deci­sion to go organic was the right choice. “I did the com­mer­cial dairy thing for 12 years but I didn’t feel the need for chem­i­cals so I stopped using them,” said Meyer. “My farm­ing phi­los­o­phy was totally aligned with going organic, so in 2007, I became certified.”

Before a prod­uct can be cer­ti­fied as organic, it must be pro­duced on land that is free of chem­i­cals for a min­i­mum of three years, with paper­work to back up the claim. An organic farm faces an annual inspec­tion by an inde­pen­dent third-party inspec­tion team that reports to a local agency that enforces the National Organic Pro­gram of the United States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA).

The USDA book of rules and reg­u­la­tions includes the fol­low­ing stan­dards: cows and calves are fed 100% organic feed; organic crops, hay, and pas­ture are grown with­out the use of syn­thetic fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides that have not been care­fully screened and approved; non-natural feed addi­tives and sup­ple­ments such as vit­a­mins and min­er­als must also be approved; genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­isms are strictly for­bid­den; calves must be fed organic milk; all ani­mals must have access to out­door graz­ing land, weather per­mit­ting; antibi­otics are not allowed and only approved health care prod­ucts can be used; and ani­mals may not be fed any slaugh­ter by-products, urea, or manure.

Meyer’s cows eat a vari­ety of grasses and legumes, includ­ing alfalfa, orchard grasses, and sorghum, most of which Meyer grows on his 120-acre farm. For seven months of the year, the cows graze in the pas­ture, but in the colder months, they feed in the barn. Grasses make up three-fourths of their diet with the other fourth com­ing from grains like bar­ley, ear corn, oats, and spelts, a species of wheat. Meyer grows about 30% of the grains and pur­chases the rest.

Organic farm­ers con­trol pests and rodents the old fash­ioned way, with cats and mouse­traps. As for weed con­trol, Meyer said that it can be accom­plished with con­sis­tent mow­ing and till­ing of the land, along with nat­ural graz­ing by the cows. Good crop rota­tions are impor­tant too because weeds that thrive in one crop may not thrive in another, so if crops are rotated often, young weeds do not have time to get established.

Meyer has 50 cows of assorted breeds that range in age from 2 to 11. He milks by machine twice a day, 12 cows at a time. Cows give milk ten months of the year, then spend two months “dry” while wait­ing to calf. Meyer calves in the spring and the fall, mean­ing that for six months of the year, only half of the herd is milk­ing. Some of the calves will replace older cows in the herd, oth­ers are sold to neigh­bor­ing farms, and still oth­ers are butchered.

Meyer sells his raw milk to the Organic Val­ley Coop­er­a­tive, a Wisconsin-based com­pany that mar­kets organic milk and milk prod­ucts through­out the United States, espe­cially in larger cities and along the East Coast. “A semi truck picks up my milk every other day and most of it is processed by Smith Dairy in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, and then mar­keted through Organic Val­ley,” said Meyer.

Organic Val­ley han­dles a num­ber of organ­ics includ­ing meat, but milk is their main prod­uct. While com­mer­cial milk is often made into other prod­ucts like cheese and cot­tage cheese, most organic milk stays fluid. “Peo­ple who are into organic pre­fer to eat ‘raw’, that is they want prod­ucts that have the least amount of pro­cess­ing,” said Meyer.

Not only are organic foods more healthy, but the idea of reduc­ing the amount of chem­i­cals that con­t­a­m­i­nate the soil and water sup­ply is yet another effort to purify the envi­ron­ment or in pop­u­lar lingo, “go green.”

On its web­site (www.organicvalley.coop), Organic Val­ley lists six rea­sons why con­sumers should choose organic. Organic is higher in vital nutri­ents. Organic does not use pes­ti­cides or syn­thetic fer­til­iz­ers which can con­t­a­m­i­nate food and con­tribute to soil degra­da­tion. Organic reduces human expo­sure to dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals like growth hor­mones. Organic does not use antibi­otics which when overused can lead to antibi­otic resis­tant infec­tions in ani­mals and peo­ple. Organic does not use genet­i­cally engi­neered crops that impact ecosys­tems and human health. Organic pro­motes qual­ity care that ensures that ani­mals are healthy and pro­duc­tive, naturally.

Despite the obvi­ous health ben­e­fits, Meyer esti­mates that there are only a dozen organic dairy farms in Shelby, Mer­cer, and Darke Coun­ties, a very small per­cent­age of the total num­ber of dairy farms.

Most organic farms are smaller than com­mer­cial ones because as Meyer said, “You can’t cul­ti­vate as many acres as you can with chem­i­cal spray. The out­put per acre may be less, but the lifes­pan for organic cows to pro­duce milk is usu­ally longer, result­ing in cost sav­ings over time.” He also indi­cated that the price he gets for his prod­uct is higher than com­mer­cial because of its qual­ity, and the time and effort required to meet the strict organic standards.

This means that organic prod­ucts may cost more at the super­mar­ket, but Meyer says that is also because of sup­ply and demand. Health con­scious con­sumers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists are increas­ing the demand, but the sup­ply has not caught up, so prices remain high.

“The prices will drop at some point,” said Meyer. “I’m con­vinced that the organic mar­ket will con­tinue to grow as more and more peo­ple see it as a health­ier choice.”

Elaine Schweller-Snyder writes for the

Sid­ney Daily News.

Posted by Rachel Lloyd on Feb 5 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.