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PastureLand Crisis!
Terrible news. I called up Steve Young-Burns, the CEO of PastureLand, to tell him how much I’m in love with their Meadowlark cheddar, and to find out all the cheese’s retail locations, and he told me that there are only about 60 wheels out in the world right now—and that’s because the company is in imminent danger of going under!
PastureLand of course is the local maker of fantastic, critic-loved, people-loved pasture-raised butter, and an increasingly skilled local cheese-maker. So what’s the problem? “It’s the long tail of the recession,” Young-Burns told me. “Last summer was really tough, there was no market for our organic skim milk,” and if they can’t sell the skim milk that results from turning whole milk into butter, they can’t survive. “What I should have done is find an enduring partnership for our skim milk ten years ago,” Young-Burns told me, “but I might have some good leads now. Someone who wants to make organic Parmesan. I could sell it as organic skim-milk powder,” to companies which would use it for baking or other manufactured goods, but the plant that processes skim milk powder doesn’t have space for a small producer like PastureLand. “Minnesota has just pissed away its history of small and medium-sized processing plants,” sighed Young-Burns. “If we were in Wisconsin there would be people from the dairy board all over us trying to help, but because we’re here there’s no infrastructure.”
I’m going to guess that PastureLand’s problems are not being helped by Young-Burns's very Minnesotan instinct not to worry anyone: “When people on Facebook ask, where’s the butter, I don’t want to start whining, so I say, well it’s not here yet, be patient. But in truth we haven’t started rolling for the year, we should have started churning a month ago, and we’re not churning yet.”
What’s next? PastureLand has a board meeting scheduled for June 14. If Young-Burns doesn’t have a buyer for his skim milk, a new investor, or some positive news about the company, the future looks very dark.
What can you do? Buy PastureLand’s cheese, wherever you see it. Forward this around to people you know in food manufacturing—surely someone knows someone who can take a tankerload of grass-fed organic skim milk every 48 hours? If not, Minnesota may lose one of the best dairy producers the state has ever known.
You can contact Steve Young-Burns at Steve@pastureland.coop, or through the company’s Facebook page.
Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
I'm headed to the store right now! This is terrible news!
Cedar Summit has stopped making their ice cream due to flat sales. Buy local dairy!
Sigh. I noticed earlier this week that Pastureland was out of stock at the co-op, and I guessed then that Pastureland was struggling to find a buyer again. I hope they do find a better solution. It's my favorite local butter!
Here's some Pastureland love I wrote back in January: http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Blogs/Dear-Dara/January-2011/Cheese-Tested-Blogger-Approved/
Thank you for promoting and supporting Minnesota's dairy industry. We have been hit hard and continue to lose producers.
Dairy makes sense. www.dairymakessense.com
The pastured pork producers in the surrounding area should be clamoring to buy the whey -- probably the skim milk as well. Probably not at a premium price but at least at a sustainable price. Because pigs grow well on whey; and corn, the predominant ingredient in pig feed, is now priced higher than gold; so subbing whey for corn & yielding really great tasting pork would be good for all of us.
How about making cottage cheese?