"A kind of regeneration came to us," says the founder of the cooperative company Maple Hill Creamery, quoted by DairyReporter, speaking about organic dairy products with milk from grass-fed cows.

A Pioneer's Story

"When we started doing this type of farming, regenerative wasn't yet a word," said Tim Joseph to DairyReporter, discussing the tough early years of milk production with 135 farms, reaping the rewards of regenerative farming practices and taking the American consumer on a journey full of benefits.

Dubbed the original company for 100% grass-fed organic dairy products in America, Maple Hill Creamery remains the only dairy producer that combines all three definitions accepted today. But Founder Tim Joseph himself isn't what you'd call a conventional farmer, for reasons beyond the milk his cows produce.

"I started working for a friend in the world of managing oral surgery practice," he said. "At that time, I was into digital imaging, when you get your X-rays, they put a small digital sensor in your mouth. I was a product manager for Kodak Dental at that time." But what led him to dairy production?

"I dreamed of a farm, so I drove around the entire state of New York to find a suitable area. For the price of a house where we lived near the Hudson Valley, we bought a 250-acre farm with barns. I had two boys at that time, and that eventually turned into five kids, and I just wanted to raise them in that environment."

Maple Hill Creamery began as a conventional dairy producer, feeding cows with seasonal pasture grains. But the higher price paid for organic milk convinced the team that a transition was viable. "I was drawn to organic because the price of conventional milk was at one of these very low points. We were so close to managing organically, that it just made no sense not to do it and get a higher price.

But, given that the price of milk for conventional ones was so low, it was a really bad time for transition, and then we had to use organic inputs while receiving such a low price, and that made everything even harder. That's what forced us to take the next step, and we were organic and grass-fed at the same time."

Health Benefits

Though other farmers told them they couldn't produce enough milk to survive economically, feeding the cows only grass, Joseph responded that the health benefits for the herd were clearly evident from the start.

"We had a herd of 60 cows, and you needed the vet to come every month for a herd health visit, which was really more of a sick visit, because out of 50-60 cows you always had five or six that had a chronic metabolic problem or a foot issue. Foot and leg problems are the most common reason a dairy cow leaves a herd.

And that was probably the most impactful thing health-wise. Our cows' hooves became so heavy, they were like rocks. So, grass-feeding eliminated a major problem that all dairy farmers have."

A Lifestyle

Over the years, Maple Hill Creamery has grown from a single 65-cow farm to a conglomerate of 135 farms, each with around 50 head, being "fairly small in the grand scheme of dairy," as Joseph put it, but proving to be a resilient model in ensuring stability for farmers.

"After we started bringing more farms on board with us, I realized that grass-fed organic is, hopefully, a more stable market for what I would call family-scale farms," he explained.

"I'm not knocking bigger farms, it's just a different scale from most modern dairy products, and it's a lifestyle that many people value in rural America.

But I think what's happened with organic, especially as it's probably a better opportunity than conventional, especially for small to medium-sized dairy plants.

We see bigger and bigger inputs and bigger and bigger farms across the country. It may not meet the expectations of what an ecologically-minded consumer thinks they're buying, but it exists. And it's really tough for a farmer with 50 or 100 cows to compete with giant farms."

At the same time, this type of grass-fed management-oriented agriculture has attracted more young farmers into farming, Joseph maintained, and not just into milk production. "With a grass-fed farm, there's never a day that's the same. It's hot, it's cold, it's wet, it's dry, the grass is growing or it's not.

It's really a person's farm that has to adapt to anything, above all else, and that's not for everyone. It's not like grain-fed agriculture, and it's not management-fixed, where you have the ability to feed an animal a spoonful of grain cover, is it?"

He said that the average age of Maple Hill farmers is "probably still in the mid-40s, which, compared to agriculture in general and dairy, is a younger average age by 20 years. My biggest satisfaction is that we're getting a definition of regenerative that's pleasing and easy."

A Necessity

In addition to feeding their cows grass-fed and organically, Maple Hill also adheres to regenerative farming practices. At first, becoming regenerative was done out of necessity, as Joseph explained:

"When we started doing this, regenerative wasn't yet a word. Now, he argues that Maple Hill farmers were regenerative before regeneration was a known thing because to do this kind of farming, you have to be regenerative yourself, in thinking.

But we were somewhat alone in it, so we had a grassroots culture, and we figured out how to graze the cows differently, how to manage these cows. If you want to produce milk from grass-fed cows consistently for many years, you have to do it regeneratively, constantly improving the soil and grass, harnessing that solar energy and making the soil and cows work together so they leave more nutrients in the soil than when you started."

For most farmers joining us, that act of regeneration takes from 3 to 5 years. From leaving the old system, using the knowledge we have now about how to graze and how to manage the cows, regeneration begins, and then, ultimately, in the third to fifth year, serious results come.

Your soil is able to retain more water, your grass becomes richer in sugar, which helps cows produce more milk. We didn't know we were doing that at that beginning moment, but we had to do that to survive. We couldn't afford to use those organic inputs, so a kind of regeneration came on its own."

A dissatisfaction

But as the debate over what constitutes regeneration heats up today more than ever, Joseph said he has a dissatisfaction with how undefined this type of agriculture remains. "Regenerative means 50 different things to 50 different people, especially in the business world.

It annoys me a little that everyone is "regenerative", when I know very well what that actually means. Spreadsheet regeneration is not what we do. It's the real deal. And I hope we figure out how to better communicate what that means so that it's more meaningful."

Asked to elaborate, he said a lot of what's happening now is "redefining what's already being done, versus really making the big changes that need to happen for this to be economically viable. At the level, to do regeneration, farmers are putting their livelihoods at risk,” he said.

"It's not fair to make a blanket statement, but I've done this long enough and seen enough things to know in my heart that it is. Especially in the plant-based movement.

I just feel like there's a lot of eco-laundries and there's a lot of consumers who think they're buying a product that's better for them or better for the planet, to be really honest when I talk about it, and agriculture on plant based is how we go there. These are cultures, right? What is different about taking this plant and grinding it up and putting it in a box today that is different from yesterday?

Regenerative washing is a big problem and I really don't know how to solve it. We are happy to say that we are regenerators and that is the truth. But I fear that regeneration might go in a direction that is not congruent with how we do things and what we think they mean.

Maple Hill's founder believes that creating an overly prescriptive definition would be the worst thing you could do, because everyone's context is so different. "My biggest fear is that we get a definition of regenerative that is palatable and easy for the whole industry to adopt, because then it will be completely meaningless if it isn't already," he explained, adding that any definition would must be connected to the outputs.

Pay for progress

In April 2023, Maple Hill Creamery received $20 million in funding from the USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program to grow markets for organic, sustainable, regenerative, grass-fed dairy products.

"The grant intersected with so many things that we always wanted to do, but with our meager resources, as a small company, we just couldn't," said Joseph.

"We always wanted to incentivize our farmers for the positive results they create, but we didn't have the funding. We pay one of the highest milk prices in the US, for example. We call it Pay for Progress and now we've been able to put some fuel on the fire and incentivize people to improve their pasture cover, which brings a whole host of other positives. Improving your pasture scores over time improves your financial situation forever."

The grant will also enable the company's heritage dairy to improve the visibility of its organic credentials, with grass-fed cattle and regenerative land. Asked if he thinks consumers have grasped the concept, Joseph said:

"I think most of them don't even know the word and certainly don't know what it means. We're all in this industry together and we talk about it all the time, but for the most part, my experience with consumers and a lot of the research I've seen has led to the conclusion that it's still early days for the word regenerative to enter consciousness consumers.

This is the point behind the Climate-Smart grant, in fact. To create progress on the ground, but also in the market. And maybe one day, people will begin to understand what those products mean and gravitate towards.

Our main focus is "grass-fed and organic" and we happen to be regenerative too, so that's our consumer and they're on the "regenerative" journey whether they know it or not! We were a pioneer there and I think the consumers also know, at least, that we are special.

Maybe one day they'll understand that it's because of the system the company is built on and the fact that it's regenerative, but most of them are quite happy just to be able to buy milk or dairy with milk from grass-fed cows, fact which, at this moment, makes us stronger and stronger in the market". (Photo: Dreamstime)