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Article: True Yankee ingenuity launches MOOMilk Maine organic milk producers form company to save farms
- Article from:
- Bangor Daily News Bangor, ME
- Article date:
- October 10, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 Bangor Daily News Bangor, ME. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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BAR HARBOR - Last February, a group of Maine organic dairy
farmers thought that their businesses as they knew them had come to
an end. Citing a soft organic market, a depressed economy and the
great distances to serve organic milk producers in far-flung
Washington and Aroostook counties, 10 farms were given their pink
slips by H.P. Hood Inc.
The farmers were flabbergasted. Each had a contract, and all said
they had made substantial investments in their farms to convert to
organic.
But this is rural Maine, and with true Yankee ingenuity, the 10
farmers banded together to find a solution. Through a cooperative
agreement among the farmers, private investors, Smiling Hill Farm in
Westbrook, ...