Local

New ‘LOCAL’ Brand in the Mountain South – Thanks, Food City & Milkco!

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Went to a Food City store and what did I see?

A New Brand of LOCAL Milk looking back at me!

 

In a month of challenging news centered on COVID-19 and how it is affecting farms across the country, a once-every-10 days trip to a grocery store offered a bright spot in an otherwise difficult time frame.

 

‘Southern Dairies’ is a new brand of milk making its way onto Food City shelves!  This carton was a sight for sore eyes, particularly when I saw the words  “We support LOCAL dairy farmers!”  And then, I saw the milk plant #37-82,  a milk plant I and many others in the South are familiar with – the Milkco plant at Asheville, NC.   The cost on this day (Friday, April 10, 2020)  was $2.99 / gallon.

 

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Because I’m fairly familiar with farms whose milk is delivered to certain milk plants in the southeast, this made me extremely happy!  That milk plant receives the majority of its milk from farms in northeast TN (from Knox County to Johnson County), southwest VA, North Carolina (central to western NC), SC, and north GA.

 

I have many, many friends whose milk is bought by Milkco, and this is another opportunity for their milk to be available to regional/local consumers!  Truly, this is a case of a milk plant located in the mountain south, purchasing from farms in the south, and delivered to food retailers in the South!  That’s a whole lotta local $$ circulating in the area economy!

 

Food City has collaborated with the Milkco plant before, as they have sourced their Food Club (private label) branded eggnog from them in past holiday seasons.

 

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There were  other brands of gallon milks on the Food City Dairy Case shelf at the time of this visit:  Mayfield is another brand of milk processing milk from southeast dairy farms, with a plant in Athens, TN.    The ‘food club’ brand is bottled at the Superior Milk plant in Canton Ohio, sourcing milk from farms in that regions of the country.

 

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Food City is a grocery store chain of approximately 130 stores located from Southwest Virginia to Eastern KY, through East TN and into North GA.  This is a chain I know well, since I am frequently in their stores, and I know vegetable growers who sell produce at Food City.    This chain, like many,  has been challenged with all of the panic buying experienced by many groceries across the country, with shortages at times.  The ‘new normal’ has still not settled in, but things are better than at the beginning of the pandemic hoarding.

Read some related articles about the effect Coronavirus buying had on Food City:

 

Read More about Food City in general:

 

None of us in farming, food, or the supply chain have any idea what the ‘new normal’ will be when the Coronavirus is more under control and life gets back into more of a predictable routine.  While it is hoped sales of Southern Dairies branded milk take off like a rocket, that too is unknown at this point, and we’ll have to wait and see what other varieties or flavors of milk make it into retail channels.  But shelf space and access to consumers, ever how much it is, is a great beginning!

 

Food City and Milkco have teamed up to give dairy farmers who operate farms in the southeast something to be proud of when they walk into a Food City – that’s their milk on that shelf!   And this won’t only help local dairy farmers, this will help other farms in the area who grow grains which help feed those dairy herds, it will help local agribusinesses who serve those dairies, and it will give a sense of pride to local southeast communities.

And for that, many farms and agribusinesses in the southeast are grateful for this ‘carton of hope’ at Easter Weekend, 2020. 

Southern Dairies, you have our prayers and our support for a successful brand launch and future!

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Dean Foods to close 7 plants in 2018; No additional producer letters expected soon

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(NOTE:  This is an evolving story affecting Dean Plants across the country.  Sources are a variety of public information and anonymous sources.  Updates will be made as warranted).

Dean Foods will be closing 7 processing plants in seven states in the next months, with the plants located in Kentucky, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota.

News of the plant closings began to emerge through local news outlets in some of the cities involved through the day Tuesday, May 22nd, yet, at this posting, there are yet no official statements from Dean Foods corporate officials.

This announcement follows the jolting announcement in early March that over 100 farmers in 8 states, marketing milk as Dean Dairy Direct (independent producers, meaning not members of a co-op or marketing agency) producers, would have their contracts terminated as of May 31, 2018.  At this point, many of those farmers have found new markets, several elected to disperse their herds, with several still struggling to find a market and income source for their farm’s milk.

The navigation of stormy, wind-tossed oceans of milk in the overflowing worldwide dairy milkshed has led to the announcement that these processing plants will be shutting their doors during the late summer and fall.   Intense competition to find a processing market/plant for milk, exacerbated by declining milk consumption the world over, has converged in a perfect storm of farmers getting caught in the crosshairs with no markets for their milk, along with employees in processing plants losing their jobs as well.

Competition for the prime retail real estate of grocery store shelf space is also a factor in these events.

In the southeast, the two Dean Foods plant closures at Braselton, GA and Louisville, KY follow the early May announcement of the closure of a Fulton, Ky plant, owned by Prairie Farms.  In that event, processing operations will cease, but the facility will remain a distribution center, with 12 of 52 employees remaining.

An anonymous Dean Foods source says that “no more farmer/producer contract terminations via letters from Dean Foods are expected in the near future.”  However, we all know that increasing consumption of fluid milk is the quickest way to stabilize the future of all dairy farms across America.

The Dean plants said to be closed are:

  1. (News report: not initially confirmed by Deans)
  2. (News report: Member of founding family not bitter) 
  3. News report:  (Processes gallons & half-gallons, 120 employees)
  • Braselton, GA [Mayfield brand]   (2015 Dean’s CEO Quality Award Recipient)    (Visitors Center closed in 2014, reopened, Over 1 million folks a year to learn) (Reports from anonymous employees who received notices)
  • Louisville, KY    [Dean’s brand] News report link to WKYT) “That loss will cut production at the company’s Louisville plant, which will shut down.”

This announcement is only one in a series of cost-cutting measures Dean Foods has taken over the past several years.  A PET milk plant in Richmond, VA was closed in the fall of 2017.   In a Food Business News report of March 1, 2018, phrases such as “increasing competition,’ ‘6% decline in volume,’ and ‘reset cost structure,’  were signals more changes are to come.

The Louisville plant closure comes as no surprise, due to its distribution overlap into Indiana of retail centers to be served from the new Walmart milk processing plant opening in Fort Wayne, IN.  However, the opening of that Walmart plant has now been pushed to late summer, for a variety of reasons.  A recent report by Sherry Bunting, which appeared in the Farmers Exchange, features an interview with a Walmart spokesperson on that project’s status.

The closure of the Braselton, GA, Mayfield plant, may have come as a bit of surprise to some folks.  In 2016, this display in the Visitor’s Center relayed some stats which were current at that time, however, today’s employee count is closer to 150.  It is not known if this includes distribution networks.

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Dean Foods, as of an annual Dairy Foods (magazine) report, last published in the August 2017 edition, is the United States second largest milk processor, with Nestle being #1.

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As is common with any company treading in difficult waters, reports of a sale of the company, or of a merger and acquisition, are commonplace.  Sometimes they prove to be nothing, sometimes they prove to be true, and only time will tell which is the case with Dean’s.  It truly will be in the best interest of the United States dairy industry for the company to stabilize, due to the number of farms for which it provides a market, and for the number of employees in plants across the country.

The hardest truth of all of this is that ultimately, farmers in local regions, the rural economies that depend on a viable market for those farmers, and employees at plants, are the ones suffering the most from battles at all levels of the worldwide milkshed. 

Updates, and corrections if needed, will occur as more news becomes available.

 

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