The Beginnings of a Cheese Project?

Our April 13 posts mentioned our cheese project. We are not entirely sure where it will lead and what will be its outcomes, nor can we precisely say where it began. Multiple connections led us to where we are now, and any one of them could conceivably be identified as the beginning. One event does stand out, however.

On a 2006 iteration of our annual visits to friends and family in northern New York State, we were denied one of the normal pleasures we had come to expect there. We were unable to obtain a favored local specialty—fresh cheese curds. When we asked what had happened, we heard a tale of woe.

The source of our cheese curds, a factory in Heuvelton, NY, was shut down. Newspapers cited competition, oversupply, and general volatility in the commodity market for cheese. Whatever the reason, the situation was dire for the 95 local Amish dairy farmers, who no longer had a place to sell their milk and were forced to dump it. Forbidden by their customs from using refrigeration or mechanized transport, they had depended on the nearby factory where they would deliver their milk in horse drawn wagons,

We found the story fascinating because of its contrasts—how it highlighted changes in the way society is organized. The situation in Heuvelton was not only a clash between the ways of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, but it also reflected the huge gap that has opened between the local markets of the past and today’s global markets.

Later research revealed that as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, nearly 1,200 cheese factories operated at crossroads in rural New York State. Their number and distribution were determined by the same factors that 100 years later affected the Amish farmers in the Heuvelton area. Without refrigeration and rapid transport, and with too few local consumers of liquid milk, the only economically viable outlet for dairy products was in cheese production. And factories could be no farther apart than a horse could walk in a few hours.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the number of cheese factories in the state had dwindled to fewer than 50, and most were huge, spewing out tons of mozzarella for pizzas and cheddar as feedstock for processed products.

The industrialization and commoditization of cheese-making was perhaps inevitable. Even in the nineteenth century, cheese was not made just for local markets; dairymen began making it precisely because the local population could not consume all the milk they were producing. Turning milk into cheese solved the problems of preservation and transport, and made their farms economically sustainable. And in serving ever wider markets, the need for standardization of products and quality control increased apace. Results were plain; cheese-making was no longer a craft, and the rush to industrialization seemed unstoppable.

Yet in the past decade we have seen the beginning of a small but growing countercurrent. Local sources for all kinds of foods are becoming available, and consumers are rediscovering them, valuing the quality and diversity offered. As in other states, a group of pioneer cheese makers in New York State established a guild. Today its nearly 40 member organizations are mostly family-operated, farm-based enterprises. They produce unique cheeses of known provenance, and they serve high-end, discerning, and appreciative clienteles.

Taken by the contrasting trends, and energized by the enthusiasm of the people propelling them, we are confident that there are stories to be enjoyed and insights to be gained by looking deeper. Our project, however it may turn out, seeks to understand and reveal the many dimensions of one small slice of an ongoing revolution in the way people view quality, and how producers and consumers can interact in ways that improve the lives of both.