Organic benefits everyone
Lyle Edwards believes he was destined to farm.
“Farming chose me,” he says, “I’ve wanted to farm ever since I can remember.”
It didn’t take him long to make it happen. Lyle broke into conventional dairy farming in 1976, at the tender age of 24, and never looked back.
Since 1999, Lyle and his wife, Kitty, have been running a 135-acre organic dairy farm in the Northeast Kingdom, about ten miles south of the Canadian border, in Westfield, Vermont.
Back in 1976, Vermont boasted 3,500 dairy farms. Now the number is closer to 1,200. According to Lyle, the biggest reason for the decline is that the farmer’s share of the retail price for conventional milk has fallen from 50% to 30% over the last thirty years.
When Lyle and Kitty made the switch to organic, they joined CROPP, a cooperative of organic family farms that sets and guarantees sustainable milk prices to its farmers. This lets Lyle, Kitty, and their fellow organic farmers work together to harness the higher prices and demand for organic milk. When the time comes to set milk prices for the following year, explains Lyle, “the farmers decide…and we do a business plan around that.”
