For many Maine dairy farmers, 2016 has been a challenging year.
Wholesale milk prices have plummeted for farmers, some of whom received as much as $32 per hundredweight, or about 11.5 gallons of fluid milk in 2015 but as little as $10 per hundredweight this summer.
Still, there are bright spots in the state’s dairy industry, and one of them is yellow, rich, creamy and delicious spread thickly on fresh bread: locally churned butter. It’s made by relatively large and widely distributed companies such as Kate’s Homemade Butter in Arundel, which makes more than 1 million pounds per year, and Casco Bay Butter of Scarborough, which adds gourmet flavors to its product. Butter is also made in Maine by much smaller dairies that dot the landscape and sell through local stores and by word of mouth.
“If people have a local butter they love to buy, they are fiercely loyal to that butter, just like everybody’s got their favorite ice cream,” Julie Marie Bickford, executive director of the Maine Dairy Industry Association, said. “When you see a new butter, it is exciting, especially when you see it in one of the larger grocery stores. We’re so well situated, just a few hours from Boston, so Maine is in a great place to grow some of these value-added items.”
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