Crusading for
Better Organic
Standards
George Siemon will be the first to tell you that
he’s nothing if not an old hippie: he has long
hair, lives on a ridgetop in rural Wisconsin in
a house called “The Kettle” and he hates—and
rarely wears—shoes. But make no mistake: in
his 31 years at the helm of dairy giant Organic
Valley, his counterculture values, in particular
the art of cooperation, have served him—and
us all—very well indeed.
First, there’s Organic Valley itself, the co-op
Siemon started with a handful of other struggling
Wisconsin dairy farmers. They could have tried
to build the business from scratch. Instead, they
formed partnerships with other family farmers
who had a similar vision of producing a healthier,
more sustainable food system—sharing in the
hard work and profits—a model that helped Or-
ganic Valley grow into a billion-dollar company
without making huge investments in infrastruc-
ture. It’s now the largest cooperative of organic
farmers in North America, with nearly 2,000
family farms across the country. “We went from
having farmers try to survive to helping them
thrive, which was always our pure objective,” he
says. “Organic was the tool we chose to make
that happen. It allowed us to take sustainable
care of the land and return a fair price to our
farmers.” And even when the company itself got
big, Siemon never stopped listening to his farm-
ers: at its annual meeting in LaCrosse, Wisconsin,
600-plus farmers—a ballroom filled with a sea of
plaid, as one attendee described it—showed up
to have their say. Those who couldn’t make it had
Siemon’s direct dial at company headquarters.
Then there’s the federal organic standard,
which he helped pioneer, birthing an indus-
try now worth $50 billion a year. And he has
been one of its staunchest defenders. When
the Trump administration blocked an organic
animal welfare ruling that would have, among
other things, banned the docking of cows’ tails
and mandated more space for livestock, Siemon
fought back. Along with other organic leaders,
he filed a lawsuit to force the USDA to step out
of the way. (Round 1 went to Organic Valley. But
the battle continues.)
Siemon stepped down from the company in
March, but his legacy of pushing to further or-
ganic, sustainable practices remains in the com-
pany’s DNA. Just prior to his departure, Organic
Valley announced a grass-fed dairy standard that
farmers can add on to their organic certification,
which it developed with New York dairy company
Maple Hill Organic. Creative thinking paired with
cooperation and some good, old-fashioned hip-
pie love: a magic formula for organic growth.
George Siemon, Founding Farmer and Former CEO, Organic Valley