Pa. dairy farmers find happy collaboration for surplus milk

Last year, food banks statewide came up with an idea. Using funding from the Pennsylvania Agricultural Surplus System and donations from the dairy industry, they got 12 tanker loads of surplus milk a local co-op was going to dump. (Milk-transport trucks can hold anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 gallons.) They took the rescued milk to local cheesemakers and made thousands of pounds to give away free at food pantries and shelters. For farmers, it meant total revenue of $165,000. Philabundance purchased 27,680 pounds of that cheese for donations, but then took the idea one step further. It bought more surplus milk to make more of the same cheese, this time to sell in fancy food stores, like DiBruno’s and Riverwards Produce in Philadelphia, under the brand Abundantly Good. For every pound of cheese sold, $1 goes back to the farmer to process milk into free cheese for hungry people. Giving people in need food of the same high quality as that sold in gourmet stores is what the whole program is really about, Bowdler said.