With Chobani set to open a new, 1.4 million square-foot facility in Rome, Oneida County’s dairy farmers and organizations that support local agriculture are excited about the new opportunities that the plant will bring.
Chobani announced on Tuesday, April 22 that it will be investing $1.2 billion in building a dairy processing facility at Griffiss Business and Technology Park in Rome. With this new plant, the company will need 12 million pounds of milk per day to produce over 1 billion pounds of dairy products like Greek yogurt, yogurt drinks and coffee creamers per year.
With Chobani procuring milk from the area dairy farms, the farms may get the chance to expand and grow into new markets, said Mary Beth McEwen, executive director of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oneida County.
“I think that they could grow and add herd and milk production, which would be absolutely fantastic, just to increase the number [of cows] that they’re milking, it creates a new market for them,” she said. “We’ve seen market struggles in the past, where at times, there’s been milk dumped and maybe a bit of productivity that was stifled because of a lack of a market.”
Neil Collins, president of the Oneida County Farm Bureau, said that he’s been in touch with several area farmers, who have told him it’s good that they’ll have more milk capacity.
“It give mores options to market milk in different places, I think it’ll make a little bit more competition in this area for milk, especially between not just this plant, but several other plant additions and expansions going on, it makes a good market for milk,” Collins said. “It highlights the fact that milk is a natural product, and we make a good bit of it in New York state here, and it’s a good provider to the local economy, so it’s something that we need to keep doing and keep supporting.”
Brianne Willson, of By-Design Farms, a dairy farm in Ava, said that through Boonville Farms Cooperative, a large amount of the milk the farm produces already supplies Chobani’s South Edmeston facility.
“We were very excited to hear there is a new plant coming, and right in our backyard,” Willson said. “If you go out to our back pastures, you can literally see where they’re going to be building the plant. So to have Chobani, which is a worldwide company, be right in our backyard, is incredible.”
On top of being a dairy farmer, Willson is a teacher, so she gets to see first-hand how Chobani works with Connected Community Schools and donates products to local school districts.
“It makes me so proud when my kids walk back to my classroom and they have Chobani, and I can say, ‘Hey, did you know my milk goes to Chobani?’” Willson said. “And then it opens up a conversation about the dairy industry.”
Willson also recalled an instance about six years ago, when there was a movement where teachers were posting their Amazon wish list for their classrooms, and asking celebrities to pay for the products on their list. Willson reached out to Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, who paid for everything on her list.
“Having the leader of a company like that, who is so connected to the community and interested in not just promoting their product and being successful, but also just supporting the people of the community and their consumers is incredible,” She said. “To be there yesterday was a full-circle moment; we produce the milk that they take and make into delicious products that I know will impact so many people.”
Terri DiNitto of DiNitto Farms, a dairy farm in Marcy, attended the announcement event, said that the new plant is a bright spot in an uncertain economy.
“Anytime we have a solid market for our product, it’s definitely a bright spot, we’re very excited,” DiNitto said. “You couldn’t help but smile the whole time because it’s a great company. They’re very good to the communities that they’re involved in, they have a big focus on food insecurity for different communities.”
“It’s a really great company to work with as far as marketing our milk to them, and it’s a great product,” she added.
She said that it will not impact milk prices — DiNitto Farms already provides milk for Chobani through the milk marketing cooperative Dairy Farmers of America.
“Yes, they’re going to need more milk. We will absolutely be able to meet the supply that they need, that’s not going to be an issue at all,” she said. “Dairy farmers are very adept at meeting the supply that America needs to feed Americans.”
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