By JANET PARMER
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Petaluma - There's no way to gauge their mental health, but Dan Benedetti believes cows milked for Clover-Stornetta Farms have every reason to be happy.

Benedetti is president of Clover Stornetta, a Petaluma-based milk processor that received an award from Sustainable Northwest, a nonprofit organization promoting sustainable business practices.

Benedetti believes Clover was given the "Founder of a New Northwest" award because of its attention to how cows are treated, the quality of the milk produced, the appearance of contributing dairy farms, and the company's connection to the consumer.

Sustainable Northwest, based in Portland, Ore., seeks out businesses taking imaginative approaches to running their companies with sound environmental practices.

'Sustainability' concept

The group started the founder's award program six years ago. This year, 24 businesses in Oregon, Washington, Montana and California received the designation from more than 160 nominations.

"We were working with rural communities about natural resource problems, and we discovered when we used the term 'sustainability' people's eyes would glaze over," said Matthew Buck, Sustainable Northwest's communications director, explaining why the award program started. "We needed to make it more concrete."

Clover Stornetta was singled out, said Buck, because of its socially and environmentally friendly policies, and the freshness, taste and price of its products.

"They're responding to what the consumer wants," Buck said. "The consumer is asking for milk without growth hormones and organic milk. They support family farming and have developed a relationship between the producers and the community."

Growth hormone barred

Clover, which processes milk from 16 local dairy farmers, began its "North Coast Excellence" program in 1994 to assure consumers of milk quality, humane animal husbandry, and sound environmental practices. The program prohibits the use of a synthetic bovine-growth hormone, known as rBST, which is used at some dairies to boost milk production.

Clover hired an independent accounting firm to audit its policies and procedures and to verify the dairy meets its standards for milk quality. Milk is tested regularly for bacteria, pesticides, antibiotics, coliform and somatic cell count.

"We wanted to make it tangible and real so we had people audit what they were doing," Benedetti said.

Affidavits required

The participating Clover dairies sign affidavits annually asserting they're not using the growth hormone.

Three years ago, Clover became the first dairy in the United States to be named in the "free farmed" program established by the American Humane Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The dairy was certified by the AHA, the oldest national humane group, because of how the cows are raised and maintained and the cleanliness of the milk.

Petaluma dairyman George McClellan and his two adult children, Jana and Robert, tend to 1,100 Holsteins, and the dairy is one of the biggest contributors to Clover milk.

McClellan said the concept of sustainability is reflected in his philosophy for running the dairy and his stewardship of the land and cattle.

"The concept is, the better we take care of the cows, the better they take care of us, in terms of production, less sickness and enhanced livelihood," McClellan said.

Nearly a decade ago, Clover executives decided it was important to address sustainability and what it meant, and organized a monthly meeting of its dairymen to talk about being environmentally friendly, economically viable and socially responsible.

"We wanted to bring the consumer through Clover-Stornetta to the retailer and bring the family full circle. Since the industrial revolution, modern agriculture has done everything it could to separate the producer from the consumer," Benedetti said.

"We knew we couldn't do it ourselves. We had to have the dairy families define it. Every month we're continually redefining it. You're never sustainable, but working towards it. Always pushing the envelope," he said.

Farm plan for each dairy

With the assistance of the University of California cooperative extension program, each dairy drew up a farm plan, which essentially was a footprint of its land. It noted animal habitat, riparian corridor and proximity to the watershed. The dairies regularly review a portion of the plan, such as water runoff, to examine how they can improve their practices by limiting livestock access, planting trees or improving drainage on the property.

"We came up with the farm plan as a group and set our standards ahead of the rest of the industry," McClellan said. "We're trying to create a niche market to survive. We'll never be the biggest, but we can be the best."

He noted that high-volume dairies in the Central Valley keep cows in more restrictive surroundings than cows in Sonoma County, where they're on pasture much of the year.

"The cows in Sonoma County are happy compared to cows in the Central Valley," he said.

"It was a real eye-opener to farmers the first time they found out what their ranch was able to sustain," Benedetti said. "There were none with too many cows for the number of acres, but some had too many cows in a certain area of the ranch."

He's spoken at business forums about Clover's sustainable agriculture practices and policies, and said there are numerous groups working independently to promote sustainability, but in some cases they overlap or duplicate their efforts.

"There's a crying need for sustainable organizations to get their act together and go to the populous of the country," he said.