By Sherry Bunting, published in Farmshine, Friday, January 4, 2019

“Everything helps… Anything helps,” said Nelson Troutman. The Pennsylvania dairy farmer gave consumers in his area an early Christmas gift, and this gift of knowledge keeps giving in the New Year.

Frustrated by the forced emphasis on low- and non-fat milk promotion and seeing the need to draw attention to the simple healthy truth about milk, while planting the seed that consumers can ask for local milk, Troutman came up with his own promotion idea.

On December 11, he painted a wrapped round bale with the words “Drink LOCAL Whole MILK 97% FAT FREE!”

Then he placed the round bale in his pasture, where it is visible at the intersection of Wintersville and Stouchsburg Road near Richland, in the Lebanon/Berks area of Pennsylvania.

After all, whole milk is standardized to 3.25% fat content, making it virtually 97% fat-free — a point on the minds of consumers that milk labels and checkoff promotion have not been able to tap into.

“It was the cheapest and easiest thing to do, and I’ve gotten a lot of very nice and interesting comments,” said Troutman in an interview with Farmshine. “Today, I saw two ladies walking down the street. They had just passed the bale. I had no idea who they were. They saw me coming out the farm lane and waved. I am sure they were talking about the bale.”

Nearly three weeks after his round bale billboard was placed for the community and those passing through to see, Troutman said the gift keeps giving with new and continuing conversations.

“I am amazed at talking to people about this educational bale,” Troutman said Monday (Dec. 31). “People say to me that they did not know any milk is 97% fat-free, much less that the whole milk is 97% fat-free!”

Troutman uses their surprise at this revelation as a teachable moment.

“I explain that fat-free milk is 100% fat-free, 1% milk is 99% fat-free, 2% milk is 98% fat-free and whole milk — at 3.25% fat — is basically 97% fat-free. They are astounded,” he affirms. “So, I ask them what they thought any milk is, and they tell me that they never thought about it. When I ask them what they think the fat percentage of whole milk is, most answers were 10% to 20% fat. I actually had one man say he thinks whole milk is 50% fat! His wife made him drink 2% milk for that reason.”

So what is being gained with this message? Troutman gives an example. He said the man who confessed that he thought whole milk was 50% fat — upon hearing the truth — said he will never again drink 2% milk and has switched to whole milk while also being made aware of the local ties and how to find local brands.

What does all the milk confusion tell us about the success — or failure — of mandatory checkoff promotions? People are confused about so many things where milk is concerned. But the fat content should not continue to be one of their confusions. It is standardized and easy to demystify with a simple message, a simple sign, that opens the door to conversations that matter.

Troutman said he knows that the dairy farmers’ mandatory checkoff promotion organizations of American Dairy Association Northeast (ADANE) and Dairy Management Inc (DMI) — and even Allied Milk Producers — cannot advertise milk as 97% fat-free. He says there are government rules about putting this on the label or in a checkoff-funded campaign.

But, he believes it is high time for a grassroots promotion.

“We farmers can do this! It’s real education, and it sure beats the price of the milk mustache. Advertising is expensive, but we farmers have an edge. We live along roads and highways where we can put up signs, use our bales, silage bags, silos, barns, and wagons,” says Troutman.

“We also have friends that have agribusinesses in town that could use a sign. And there is Facebook, which is very powerful to the consume. We need the consumers in Pennsylvania to ask for whole Pennsylvania-produced milk at our restaurants, schools and stores,” he adds.

Troutman is definitely on to something, as people across the state and in other regions as well have complained all year on social media and at meetings and with photos of supermarket dairy shelves that whole milk is often not stocked to the density of the fat-free, low-fat and reduced fat milks.

In fact, as one producer in northern Pennsylvania noted recently, she has to order whole milk on ahead at her local store if she wants more than three gallons for an event. When asking the store manager why whole milk is not made more available in the dairy case, the store owner told her the reason is because it isn’t as healthy and contains too much fat!

Nelson Troutman’s simple idea is borne of frustration but with education and truth at its core, and it is easy to implement.

He says that dairy farmers are fed up with decades of their product being thrown under the bus by dietary guidelines and promotion restrictions leading people to believe — over time — that whole milk is full of fat. The labels do not even say 3.25% fat! And this has led to people having all kinds of inflated ideas about how much fat is in whole milk to begin with.

It is no wonder that even well-educated pediatricians mindlessly follow blindly the lies of omission — telling mothers to put their children on lower fat milks at age two because they falsely believe whole milk is more than 10% fat!

Troutman made his round bale sign and placed it in his pasture by a busy intersection to educate his community and to encourage other farmers and agribusinesses to use his idea to educate their communities.

“Maybe they want to do something on a bale or a wagon or a silage bag,” he said. “Everything helps… anything helps.”

-30-