This week's dose of organic headlines, updates, resources, goodies, and recipes courtesy of Doug Snodgrass...

This is kind of like Super Friends gone organic.

The farmer cooperative behind the Organic Valley label put on some weight Monday when it announced a deal to manufacture and sell Stonyfield Farms milk, the Londonderry, N.H., company that sells about 13 million gallons annually.

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CROPP, which calls itself the nation's largest organic farming cooperative, has supplied the milk for Stonyfield yogurt for 10 years. The two companies often act more like colleagues than competitors, said Stonyfield Farms CEO Gary Hirshberg.

"It was never really my intent to compete with [Organic Valley], so the fact that OV was willing to take on the sales responsibility is great for me," Hirshberg said.

Consumers won't notice a change in prices or brands, but Organic Valley may begin entering markets, particularly on the East Coast, where Stonyfield has a presence. The deal takes effect Jan. 1.

Hirshberg began looking for a new partner this summer when HP Hood said it wanted to end its licensing relationship with Stonyfield.

There's an excellent discussion at AgWeb, Organic Dairy's Dilemma. Recommended.

A study of organic dairies, released last week by USDA’s Economic Research Service, shows that organic dairy producers face some of the very same dilemmas as conventional producers.

If they wish to remain small, organic producers must rely on unpaid family labor to keep the operation cash flowing. But if they want to capture economies of scale and reach any reasonable level of profitability, they have to invest heavily in capital and paid labor to milk and house hundreds of cows. Sound familiar?

And they have further burdens. After years of growing markets, organic milk sales stopped dead in their tracks last winter when the full brunt of the nastiest recession since the Great Depression gripped the nation.

According to USDA estimates of whole and reduced-fat organic milk volume, sales fell 27% in January and 12% in February compared to year-earlier sales. April was down 6%, May -8%. Through August, organic sales for these two categories are down some 70 million lb., or -6.4% compared to last year. 

Sales of all categories of conventional fluid milk, however, are up 475 million lb, or 1.4%. Not only has conventional milk grabbed back market share, it has expanded sales as cheaper fluid prices have enticed shoppers back to the dairy case.

Here's a good companion piece to the same discussion, centered on the Canadian organic dairy industry.

Organic dairy farms in Ontario are likely to remain small despite a trend to large organic dairy farms in the United States, say organic officials in the provincial industry.

In fact, organic dairy farming isn’t attracting a lot of interest here now “because the returns are simply not there,” says Lawrence Andres, owner of Harmony Organic.

Steve Cavell, CEO of Organic Meadow Co-operative, says the movement to larger farms isn’t likely to come here and he doesn’t see it happening in the United States anymore either. “It’s what the USDA bureaucrats would like to have happen. But now it’s the large operations in the United States that are wondering whether this is viable for them.”

In Ontario and Quebec, the average organic dairy farmer milks 45 cows, Cavell notes.

The conclusion that U.S. farmers will move to having larger operations was in a study by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service released this month. Study authors William D. McBride and Catherine Greene found the largest organic dairy farms, those milking more than 200 cows, accounted for more than one-third of organic milk production and are far more likely to generate returns above their capital and labour costs, “suggesting organic milk production will migrate toward larger operations.” But most U.S. organic dairy farms are small with 45 per cent milking fewer than 50 cows and 87 per cent milking fewer than 100 cows, it says in the U.S. study.

Huff Post has posted a tutorial in which Vonda Sines gets into the nitty gritty of DIY organic gardening, focusing on the things that will actually matter if you're thinking of taking the plunge. Here's a taste from the How to Get Started section.

The Farmers Almanac 2010 advises starting by picking the size of your vegetable garden. The ideal for a beginner is 10-by-16 feet. For a smaller space, use fewer plants or shorter rows. Plots running north and south for sun are ideal.

Next, choose easy-to-grow organic vegetables.OrganicGardenTips suggests that your taste buds will love natural vegetables such as tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, peas and peppers. Container gardens are great for small areas. Generally, you'll want to put plants with a similar pH together.

Companion planting is one theory of organic vegetable gardening. It allows you to work with nature instead of against it. The idea is that some dissimilar plants have developed symbiotic relationships and help each other survive. Such a relationship exists between carrots and tomatoes.

Vegetables need ammonia, a combination of nitrogen combined with hydrogen, to grow. If you plant legumes such as beans and peas near nitrogen lovers such as broccoli and kale, you'll have an ideal arrangement.

Related Reading:

6 Steps to a Greener Diet
The Organic Milk Debate: Is Big the Same as Bad?

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