Dairies milking new trend to consume local products

WALLINGTON, N.J. — Herds of New Jersey dairy cows are the latest players in a growing local foods trend.

Banking on a movement to promote eating locally grown foods, the state's agriculture department is promising that 100 percent of Jersey Fresh Skim Free comes entirely from cows on dairy farms in the Garden State.

Jersey Fresh Skim Free hit retail shelves Tuesday.

"I see this is where the growth is in the industry," said Frank Ferrante, chief executive officer of distributor Consolidated Dairies. "The whole world is going local."

Consolidated is betting consumers will pay more for the milk because they know exactly where it comes from and it helps local farmers, Ferrante said.

The concept of marketing local milk is not new. Cooperatives in Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut have promoted their local roots for several years, but they do not make the same promise that their milk is local.

A similar concept has worked at Hudson Valley Fresh, a 2-year-old cooperative in New York that draws milk from seven local dairies.

Compared to generic milk, the cost is about $1 per half-gallon more for milk exclusively from the area, and sales have grown by 30 to 40 percent over the past year, said cooperative president Sam Simon.

Increasingly, consumers want to know where their food is grown, said Valoria Loveland, director of Washington state's department of agriculture and president of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.

"There is a belief that the closer the food is grown to home, the fresher it is, the safer it is and the tastier it is," she said.

Consumers have already shown they will pay more for locally grown milk products, such as cheese and yogurt, as well as organic milk, where farmers adhere to a list of practices, said Rusty Bishop, director for the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research and professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

"The market is real," he said. "People are buying it, paying double the price. It's a social and emotional decision that consumers are making."

He said decisions are not dictated by science but more social factors, such as supporting the local farmer.

New Jersey officials had long wanted to follow up the success of their Jersey Fresh produce program with a local milk program to help dairy farmers struggling with high land costs in a state sandwiched between two major metropolitan areas.