It seems like the small boutique farms receive good press and the large monocropping farms receive bad press. The ones in the middle are largely forgotten. That’s what Sarah Gardner is trying to change. A professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and associate director for the Center for Environmental Studies, Gardner teamed up with filmmaker David Simonds to create “Forgotten Farms,” a 60-minute film released in 2016 that shares the stories of mid-sized, multi-generation dairy farms of the Northeast.
Lorraine Lewandrowski, dairy farmer and county attorney for Herkimer County, New York, promotes farming under her Twitter handle @nyfarmer. She and a number of New York farmers traveled to New York City for a March 9 screening of “Forgotten Farms” with an audience of food bloggers, nutritionists, environmentalists and foodies. The next day, the farm representatives manned a booth at the International Restaurant Show at Jacob Javits Center where they distributed whole milk samples.
Sponsored by the Center for Ag Development and Entrepreneurship of Oneonta, New York, the event brought together food producers and food influencers.
“CADE works with the New York City watershed,” Lewandrowski said. “We wanted to showcase foods from the New York City watershed. A lot of that watershed is in farms.”
The screening aligns with the movement among residents of New York City to support farms in the watershed.
“People asked so many questions,” Lewandrowski said. “There’s a real need for farmers to connect with food leadership in New York City. They may mean well, but they don’t know about the issues we face. We wanted to talk about whole milk and issues we face. This leads us to realize we may need to give information.”
She noted one example was a coffee shop owner who wanted to support dairy farmers but felt pressured by an increasing number of customers requesting oat milk.
The film stars Northeast dairy farmers interviewed on their farms.
“Some of them are very colorful characters,” Lewandrowski said. “They talk about how they became farmers. They talk about how the local food movement tended to glamorize the young organic farmer growing vegetables and going to the city and ignore the massive number of dairy farmers in the Northeast. Some of us dairy farmers who’ve asked to speak at local farming events have been told no. Well, we are local. We send you milk 365 days a year.”
She added that at the restaurant show, many passersby didn’t realize that milk they purchased at the store comes from local farms or that New York boasts a big dairy industry.
Lewandrowski also said that the farmers in attendance took time to listen to the crowed — also important for building better relations between farmers and consumers.
Gardner said that she wanted to produce the film because of her strong interest in food systems.
“I have a great appreciation for the importance of local and regional food supply,” Gardner said.
She noticed that her students’ view of farming is that the ideal farmer is a tiny producer and not a large, commercial operation growing one product in the Midwest.
“I needed to convey to that generation that there is a form of commercial agriculture that is mostly mid-sized farms,” Gardner said. “They didn’t seem to know about them, even though here in our town we have three commercial dairy farms. They didn’t notice those farms existed nor did they appreciate the important role that mid-sized family farms (have) in contributing to the food supply.”
Grants and donations funded the film, which cost $75,000 to produce. Simonds and Gardner donated their time on the three-year project, which Gardner calls “a labor of love.”
“We wanted to show the human side of agriculture, that it’s about farmers and it’s about their farms, most of which have been in business for multiple generations,” Gardner said. “You really need to see that. You need to meet the people to understand the value of that. You can’t just go to college and then say, ‘I’m going to be a dairy farmer’ and start farming. It’s generations of accumulated knowledge, know-how, equipment, barns, fences and soil quality. You can’t do it in one generation. Some people do start dairy farms, but for the most part, they’ve been in business for many generations.”
She said that while sharing the farmers’ stories, she felt that “some are cuddly and approachable, others are prickly and ornery. But you have to appreciate them once you get to know them. They’re so capable. Their knowledge and competencies are incredibly valuable, especially in this day and age when 95% of us can’t do anything with our hands. We could have called it ‘Forgotten Farmers’ because they’re completely devalued.
“Being unappreciated is the best they get. They get accused of mistreating animals, poisoning people with their milk and ruining the environment. And then they go broke. People who can produce necessary products for society need to be valued.”
Gardner also wants to promote the merit of milk over what she calls “fake milk,” the beverages derived from plants, which she also calls “a marketing scam” because she said that they detract from dairy consumption.
“If they’re not being hurt by low milk prices or being accused of polluting a water body, it’s this,” Gardner said. “What else can come down the pike to make their lives hard? It’s amazing anyone is still dairy farming. They’re in it still out of some passion or belief in what they do.”
She’s also eager to point out that the mid-sized dairy farm, which can provide local milk, has a lower carbon footprint and is sounder environmentally.
So far, the film has been viewed at 125 screenings at educational institutions, independent theaters and commercial venues. At each, Gardner invites local dairy farmers on the stage so people can meet them and ask questions. Sometimes, the Q&A session goes on for an hour after the film.
“In New England and I think in New York, most of the farmland is in dairy or crops for dairy,” Gardner said. “It’s important for the future of our land base to keep dairy farms in farming. I truly believe that we need local and regional food supply. I don’t think the model of importing foods 1,000 miles from halfway across the country is a good model.”
Gardner said that in the past half-century, more than 10,000 dairy farms have shuttered in New England and fewer than 2,000 still operate. The trend is similar in upstate New York. Gardner believes that the COVID-19 pandemic may help more consumers realize the importance of local food.
“What (is needed) from a policy perspective is more infrastructure,” Gardner said. “Everyone says we have too much milk, but we have a distribution problem. In New England, we’re in a dairy deficit. Massachusetts only produces half the milk it consumes.”
Information about arranging a screening of the film is found at forgottenfarms.org
Source: lancasterfarming.com
