This non-profit collects excess milk from farms and turns it into cheese and yogurt for hungry

As an increasing number of people in America are becoming aware of the health hazards of drinking milk and horrors of the dairy industry, the overall milk consumption in the country is falling steadily.

Now when dairy farms produce things like butter, a leftover layer of skim milk is cleared away and stored to make fat-free dairy products.

But with falling demand for milk, Pennsylvania lost 120 local dairy farmers in 2016 alone. Those remaining didn’t have the financial wiggle-room to pay for processing the excess skim milk into cheese and yogurt, so simply started dumping it instead.

Last year, however, a statewide coalition of food banks collected 12 tanker loads of surplus milk from a local co-op that was ready to discard it, took it to local cheese-makers and made thousands of pounds of cheese and yogurt to give away at food pantries and shelters for free.

For struggling farmers, it equated to about $165,000 in revenue.

Philabundance, a non-profit in Pennsylvania dedicated to the cause of eliminating food waste, purchased 27,680 pounds of that cheese for the purpose of donating it, before taking the idea one step further and buying more milk to make more of the same cheese – except this time, they started selling the cheese in fancy food stores throughout Philadelphia under the brand Abundantly Good.

For every pound of cheese sold, $1 goes back to the farmer for processing excess milk into free cheese for hungry people.

Read more here: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/struggling-farmers-turn-excess-milk-into-cheese-for-the-hungry/