On Gristmill, Tom Philpott writes that “the profitability of organic processors can't come at the expense of the farmers that supply them.” Philpott calls for consumers to force processors like Stonyfield to live up to their farmer-friendly image and absorb some of the losses as the organic milk market sorts itself out. He goes on to say that if the big organic processors won’t budge, dairy farmers should “exit the commodity market altogether, and begin selling cheese directly to consumers.”

But why wait for the processors to make the move? Feeding cows a regular and large regimen of grain is a losing proposition. Farmers who want to make a profit, or at least break even, have to escape the commodity mindset. As the sustainable farming guru Alan Nation  wrote on his blog, “The really smart guys are the one’s who only milk cows during the green season and don’t feed any grain. They are the dairy farmers who are laughing all the way to the bank in this time of super-high milk prices.”

There are many examples of farmers who are profiting while their commodity-driven colleagues are suffering. For many, they had to go through a tough period of transition, getting off farm jobs to help pay bills once paid by credit, reducing herd sizes, cutting expenses, and rebuilding carefully in order to escape the farm-debt trap that keeps many stuck in the commodity system, a system that can trap even organic farmers. I’ve been making that transition myself. Though I had to go through a period of deconstruction and strategy change, I’ve been rebuilding with improved margins and the freedom to meet my farm sustainability goals without the looming pressure of the “get big” treadmill. 

It turns out that improved margins also mean improved sustainability. Nature provides a free salad bar of grasses, legumes, and forbs to cows that are allowed to move around. All the farmer has to do is make sure that this free food is properly managed and it will keep on growing. Farmers who raise crops using compost rather than synthetic fertilizers see drastically increased yields at the same time their fertilizer costs can be cut as much as half. The examples are legions of farmers profiting from sustainability. It’s time we turned our back on the commodity market and say to the Earl Butz’s of the world: “Get small, get sustainable, and get profitable.”