Tomorrow consumers in New Jersey will be able to purchase their milk from cows that reside in their state – distributor Consolidated Dairies is launching a local milk called Jersey Fresh Skim Free.
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. Consolidated is betting consumers will pay more for the milk because they know exactly where it comes from and it helps local farmers, said Frank Ferrante, chief executive officer of distributor Consolidated 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 last 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.
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.
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. Jersey Fresh Skim Free promises no fat, added antibiotics or recombinant bovine somatotropin – hormones used to stimulate greater milk production. It will cost on average 50 cents more per half gallon than generic milk.