MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • August 29, 2021
The American arm of a multinational food conglomerate this month terminated contracts with 14 small Maine organic milk producers, a potentially catastrophic loss for the generations-old Maine dairy farms and the families who run them. Danone North America, which owns the Horizon Organic brand, sent letters to a total of 89 organic milk producers across Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and parts of New York state informing them that it would no longer buy and process organic milk in the region after next August, according to a statement by the conglomerate. The move away from the New England marketplace to larger producers in other parts of the country is part of a consolidation to cut costs, industry experts said. In 1954, there were 4,578 dairy producers in Maine. In 2017, that number had shrunk to 286.