Organizing food supply chain partners is a high-leverage way to meet the needs of everyone in the food supply chain—farm workers, farmers, processors and retailers. This case tells the story of a successful effort to align the milk supply chain for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, owned by food giant Unilever.
This case is part of a three-year study on domestic fair trade for mid-size farms. The project included:
- An overview of fair trade concepts used nationally and internationally
- An economic analysis of US agricultural labor issues
- Case studies on efforts to make US agriculture more fair to farmers and workers
- A synthesis of lessons learned
Download the Milk With Dignity case study
For more information, visit the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems website.
Project Team:
Michael Bell, Brad Barham and Michelle Miller, University of Wisconsin-Maidison project directors
Kelly Maynard, Alexia Kulwiec, Lindsey Day Farnsworth, Sarah Janes Ugoretz and Laura Frye-Levine UW-Madison
Larry Burmeister, Ohio University
Sarah Lloyd, Wisconsin Farmers Union
Erika Inwald, Domestic Fair Trade Association
Becky Glass, Labor Network for Sustainability
Peter Hurst, United Nations consultant on agricultural labor for FAO and ILO
This project was supported by Competitive Grant no. 2016-68006-24821, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.