A “made in PEI” organic cheese will soon be making an appearance in the dairy section.
Right now, virtually all of the organic dairy products sold in the province come from Ontario. The local Organic Dairy Club has been working with both Amalgamated Dairies Limited and Purity Dairy for close to two years trying to change that.
“Actually, there is no organic processing of dairy products in the Maritimes at all so we are breaking new ground,” said Roger Henry, an agriculture consultant who has been working with the club. “There have certainly been plenty of hills to climb but we have been scaling them one at a time.”
Now, they are headed for the summit. The organically produced milk picked up from four producers in Prince County in mid-September will be turned into organic cheese at the ADL's Summerside plant. Henry is hoping it will appear on store shelves in early October.
That’s a day Joe Dorgan is eagerly awaiting. He has a dairy herd of 160 head in Sea Cow Pond, and was one of the first dairy farms in the province to obtain organic certification. Dorgan grew up on a dairy farm, but later decided to switch to potatoes.
About four years ago, a downturn in spud prices convinced him it was time to come full circle. He began thinking the best return would come from organic production. “I figured if there was going to be a benefit, it would come from being first so we jumped in with both feet,” he said.
The first step was a change of mind set. Producing cattle organically means no chemicals or fertilizer in the feed and substituting medication for natural remedies like vitamin C and apple cider vinegar. For anybody considering the switch, he offers a warning. There will be a decrease in production early in the process but it will bounce back.
“The payoff has been we are getting a premium for our milk,” he said.
When he was a conventional dairy farmer, he said his animals rarely went out of the barn. Now, they spend their days on a fenced-in pasture field. During the winter months, he rotates the animals in the barn to ensure they all spend some time in the free stall section and have an opportunity to get some exercise.
Dorgan can't say enough about the support he has received from Roger Henry and Susan MacKinnon, the organic specialist with the Department of Agriculture. “They have both been there every step of the way helping us,” he said.
The organic dairy club meets once a month and Dorgan said he values the chance to network and share information with his fellow producers.
“I really think the time is right for this,” he said. “The consumer wants to know more and more about how their food is produced and I am convinced they would rather buy local.”
Those sentiments are shared by Henry. Right now, he said the emphasis is on cheese production and there are no plans to expand just yet into offering organic fluid milk. “However, we are not going to rule anything out at this point,” said Henry. “The Maritime market is wide open.”
Support for this project was provided under the Department of Agriculture’s organic industry development program.