Schulz’s new glass
In 1972 Hermann Schulz purchased a dairy farm just outside of Timboon.
In fifty-four years there were two things Hermann and his family implemented that changed everything.
The first was biodynamics, the second installing an on-farm milk bottling plant.
Introducing biodynamics to make major improvements to soil, cow and human health is pretty easy to understand, but why bottle milk on the farm when the milk factory just down the road could do it so much more efficiently?
Like Sugar Kane, Marilyn Monroe’s character in 1959’s Some Like It Hot, dairy farmers always seem to get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
Milk prices are beyond a farmer’s control – when Woolworths and Coles want to steal each other’s customers using their huge milk specials or when China buys less Australian milk powder, dairy farmers suffer.
To help the big supermarkets run their loss-leading milk specials or to help sell more milk powder to China, the dairy processors that farmers supply are constantly being pressured to drop milk prices.
And because milk goes off, dairy farmers have zero power to push back – it’s not like they can just stash it in a big tank out the back and wait a few months for a better price – fresh milk has to leave the farm every day or go down the drain.
But when milk prices do go up, the supermarkets and processors always seem to have a reason why they need to absorb the profits themselves.
Who would be a dairy farmer you ask? Well more than a quarter of dairy farmers have answered this very question by walking off their farms over the past 15 years, taking about three billion litres of milk production with them.
Okay, back to the Schulzes’ farm where their milk bottling line has turned the lollipop around to the non-fuzzy sweet end.
With their own bottled milk the Schulzes’ have been able to bypass their local milk processor’s low prices and go straight to customers.
They currently sell direct to 100 plus shops as well as from their weekly farmers market stands.
The extra money they’ve earned has been reinvested into improving soil health and projects like milk-in-glass refillable bottles – which has kept over 65 tonnes of plastic out of landfill!
The latest chapter of the milk-in-glass story has been finding local bottle maker Orora Manufacturing to make their refillable bottles in Australia.
With the new glass bottles being launched this week Simon Schulz is asking for everyone’s help to return the old style milk bottles all through July. *Refunds for old bottle returns end July 31!
Fair Food is super proud of being a founding milk-in-glass retailer. The take-up’s been so high since we launched that we stopped selling one litre milk-in-plastic altogether.
You can find Schulz’s new milk-in-glass here
Pick your Park
With your help CERES has made it through to the final round of the $250,000 Pick My Park Competition.
There’s one more vote to get us the shady special gathering places and the beautiful native plantings you’ve told us you’d love to see more of at CERES.
Vote for CERES here (it takes 2 minutes) and please share it with friends and family!
We’ve done this before – back in 2018 six hundred of you voted in the Pick My Project Competition helping build CERES’ magical giant millipede playground.
These projects help transform CERES and make it possible for so many more adults and children to experience and enjoy your unique park.
Have a great week
Chris
