20 Ontario cow-milk producers now processing dairy on-farm

ONTARIO — Once rare as hen’s teeth, there are now 20 farms processing and selling their own cow-milk dairy products in Ontario. While still out of the ordinary, it is a milestone number and an increase of 3 from a year earlier — out of the 3,270 milk producers on the Dairy Farmers of Ontario roster.

Twelve of these 20 operators are located in Western Ontario. And the trend points to even more DFO members taking the entrepreneurial leap into dairy processing and self-marketing.

In addition to the 20 farms already licensed as dairy processors, another 9 have applied to join the club, up from 7 applicants a year ago, according to DFO. Taken together, this group of 29 approved or pending license applications is double the 14 on-farm dairy processors operating in the province a decade ago, a number that remained static until recently. The extra growth and renewed interest has occurred in just the last four years, according to DFO.

Not content to produce milk for bulk pickup exclusively, the involved farmers turn their cows’ output into a variety of products that they market and sell themselves — everything from cheese and yogurt, to non-homogenized fluid milk and kefir.

It’s been quite the evolution for the supply-managed sector. At one time, DFO and its predecessor organization, the Milk Marketing Board of Ontario, didn’t envision a pathway for producers to independently process and market some or all of their herds’ milk. There was no choice but to keep their heads down and collectively ship pooled milk for a centralized system catering to the established processors. Things started to change in the 1990s, and as the local food movement gathered steam, DFO launched “Project Farmgate” in 2010 to promote on-farm milk processing and sales of boutique farm-based dairy brands.

But why take the leap when DFO will otherwise pick up a farmer’s milk for the regular pool, never to be thought of again?

Marja DeBoer-Marshal of Golspie Dairy in Woodstock gave several reasons: “To add value to our milk, to allow for additional on-farm jobs, and for the opportunity to be creative by getting to transform our milk into products that we thought were missing from our local market.”