the raw deal
Raw milk is bringing new opportunity to some Hudson Valley dairy farmers.
By anne dailey - photography by amber clark

Six years ago, I took my first sip of raw milk. It was, in short, unlike anything I’d ever tasted—clean, creamy, slightly sweet.  I’d never been much of a milk drinker but I was an instant convert.  In the years since, I’ve paid close attention to the conversations that emerge around the production and consumption of raw milk, and have listened to increasingly heated discussions of how (or even if ) it should or should not be sold legally. In the press and elsewhere, the raw milk debate is often simple back and forth between the lovers and the haters, couched in the language of mystery, fear and intrigue.  For someone who drinks raw milk for simple reasons—it’s tasty, it’s healthy, it tends to come from farmers I know—such stories have seemed frustratingly juvenile and shortsighted. Moreover, I began to notice that a key part of the conversation has been entirely missing from the debate: what does the production and sale of raw milk actually mean for local farmers? 

In New York State, raw milk can be sold legally only with a license, and only on the farm. In other words, you’re not going to find raw milk in a store, and your neighbor who milks a cow or two, but hasn’t been licensed by the Department of Agriculture & Markets, can’t legally sell you a half-gallon. When I moved to the Hudson Valley four years ago, I knew of just one farm licensed to sell raw milk, and that farm was over an hour away. In the years since, however, much has changed. According to Ag & Markets deputy commissioner Jerry Cosgrove, 27 farms currently hold licenses in New York State. While that figure might seem small, Cosgrove notes that the number has increased significantly in recent years. That increase almost certainly signifies a shift in consumer demand, but it also reflects a shift in regional farming practices and perspective.

Pasteurize or Thrive

Not so long ago, selling raw milk directly to the consumer was not a novel concept. Pasteurization itself is relatively new, its implementation stems from widespread and legitimate concern over varying quality and standards in milk production and distribution, and it didn’t become widespread until the 1940s and ’50s. Back then, most consumers knew who grew their grain and vegetables, who raised the animals that would become their meat and who produced their milk, cheese and eggs. Over the past half-century that sort of intimacy between farmers and consumers has fallen by the wayside, but, as is evidenced by the growing popularity of “Know Your Farmer” bumper stickers, of late there has been a dramatic resurgence in the number of Hudson Valley farms selling directly to consumers—utilizing CSA models, joining buying clubs and tabling at year-round farmers markets.  And yet, for a region of the country that has long been rich in dairy farms, the number of dairy farmers doing direct marketing of milk, whether raw or pasteurized, remains small. 

For decades now, most dairy farmers have milked large numbers of cows and sold the milk in bulk to companies who pasteurize, homogenize and distribute it under various labels. And, for decades, that system has worked for farmers. Then milk prices began to drop.  In the Hudson Valley, and New York State at large, the situation has become dire, with dairy farms disappearing at an alarming rate in recent years. Some farmers report stomaching losses of up to $1,300 per cow, per month, at the worst of it. In many cases, farmers received less for their milk than it cost to produce.

To be clear, raw milk is not some magic elixir that will solve the dairy industry’s problems—it’s hard to make it work on a large scale, and it will never have the shelf life of ultrapasteurized dairy, making transportation over large distances challenging, if not impossible. Here in the Hudson Valley, though, some local dairy farmers are finding that raising a smaller number of cows on pasture and selling raw milk directly to consumers can be both cost-effective and a lot less stressful.  And there’s a pool of consumers ready and waiting to pay a premium (or, in other words, fair) price. No, raw milk isn’t going to save the dairy industry, but it may save some of our local farms. 

Two years ago, 21 years old and fresh out of school, Randy Brooks returned to his family farm, F&C Brooks & Sons, in Kingston, determined to make a go of it. At the start, Brooks faced what he saw as a clear decision—“I either had to milk 500 cows and ship wholesale, or milk a small number and find a niche market.” He chose the latter, and maintains that his decision is what kept him from losing his herd last year when bulk milk prices were at their worst. “Raw milk kept us afloat,” Brooks says. “If I had all my milk in bulk surplus, we would be out of business—bottom line.”

Like Brooks, longtime dairy farmer Chuck Curtis of Ballston Spa watched dairy farms disappearing all around him, victims of encroaching development and the crippling debt that most large farms live with. Recognizing that the status quo simply wasn’t working, Curtis sold two-thirds of his herd at Willow Marsh Farm and shifted his focus to raw milk direct marketing and value-added dairy products like cheddar cheese and yogurt. “Selling milk as a wholesale product just isn’t profitable,” he says. “Since we made the change, [business] is picking up continually. We have new customers almost daily.”

Navigating a Growing Underground Economy

Curtis and Brooks are answering a growing demand among consumers—access to unpasteurized and unhomogenized milk. While still a relatively small market, it is a strong one. Consumers who seek raw milk, most often for what they see as its health benefits and purity, are willing to pay as much as seven or eight dollars per gallon—double what conventional milk sells for in the grocery store, and many times what a farmer selling milk in bulk can get. “It’s just plain delicious, rich and creamy and sweet and always changing in flavor with the seasons,” says Jennifer Clair, a raw-milk drinker from Beacon. “That is what I love about it; nuance.”

For years it’s been a tough job for most consumers to find a reputable and reliable source in the Hudson Valley without driving an hour or more each way. There are plenty of farmers who milk a few cows without licenses, but for obvious reasons they aren’t advertising what they have (fearing reprisals), and purchasing from them can feel somewhat illicit. But as more and more local farmers seek licenses and tap into the raw milk market, the idea of raw milk as a controversial, even contraband, product is slowly diminishing. 

Entering into this alternative economy, has proved to be a financially sound and personally satisfying decision for this newest crop of raw milk producers, perhaps most strikingly so for those who were once part of the wholesale dairy industry. Like Chuck Curtis, Julie Vreeland and her husband operated within that industry for years— 25 in their case. “We just kept growing with the system,” she says. At peak, they milked 2,000 cows. Eventually, the couple grew tired of it and retired. They built a house on the farm that Vreeland’s husband grew up on; an old barn was sitting empty. The couple couldn’t resist.  “We just missed farming,” she says. With a chance to start over, they opted for a smaller herd of Jersey cows. Initially, the plan was not to sell raw milk, but simply to be a visitor-friendly farm. “It was just to show people what farming used to be like,” says Vreeland. 

Visitors to the Vreeland’s Freedom Hill Farm in Otisville, which opened in the spring of 2007, began to ask if they could buy milk; today the farm supplies over 400 regular customers. “If we didn’t sell raw milk we couldn’t continue to do this,” she says. “We’re not getting rich, but we’re paying our bills and enjoying it a great deal.” Farmers who, in the past, never met their customers are watching a community build up around them, a community of consumers who are thrilled to have easy access to a product they care about, and to know the people who are producing it. While the process of getting a license to sell raw milk is not an easy one, for these farms, it’s been well worth it.

The Raw and the Cooked

When consumers come to the farm to purchase raw milk, they see the operation for themselves, meet the farmer and the cows, and learn a bit more about their food supply. It’s one of the reasons that New York State’s Department of Agriculture & Markets requires that sales take place on the farm. “We require permit holders to sell it at the farm so that the consumer can observe firsthand where the raw milk is produced,” says Cosgrove. For farmers, it’s a point of pride. “A raw-milk business is only as good as you treat your customers,” says Brooks. “We have an open-door policy, we want people to know where their food is coming from.” Consumers like Susanne Moss depend on that open door—“I only buy direct from local farmers,” she says. “Their ethics and knowledge guarantee the milk is from a healthy and happy cow.”

It can all seem a bit radical: The Department of Ag & Markets promoting putting responsibility back on the consumer; dairies that once were home to 2,000 cows scaling down and opening up on-farm shops; consumers choosing to pay two and three times the grocery store price for milk. Progress sometimes appears to be unexpected or even unrecognizable in the case of seismic shifts in our local food system. Here’s hoping that it’s a sign of the times.