Hurricane Lili no match for undaunted DFA milk haulers - Newsline - Dariy Farmers of America drivers continued to provide service in Louisiana during Hurricane Lili

Rural Cooperatives, Nov-Dec, 2002 by Melissa Sandfort

Mail carriers are much heralded for delivering mail through all kinds of adverse weather, but the real unsung heroes along the Louisiana coast this fall were the local milk haulers for Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) during tropical storm Lili. "The milkman cometh" meant that milk reached the market in Lafayette, La., even as tropical storm Lili spun out of Louisiana on Oct. 4, leaving behind a trail of mud and misery and wind and flood damage for residents. Some areas spent days without power.

But Lili was no match for the determination of milk hauler Bobby Berry and six dairy farmer families who market their milk through DFA's Southeast area based in Knoxville, Tenn.

Sammy Royer, DFA's field representative at Cankton, La., recalled, "The eye of the storm passed 20 miles from my house on Oct. 3. Six area dairy farmers asked for our help. Power was out for four days. One farmer missed four milkings because of the outage. They faced horrible winds and five inches of rain. They had been using portable generators to run the necessary equipment to produce electricity to keep the milk cold." Worse yet, area electrical outages had forced DFA's Borden dairy processing plant in Lafayette to close its doors.

"Our job was to get that milk to consumers on behalf of our dairy farm families, said Berry, who was hauling for DFA contractor H & J Burford out of Shreveport, La. "Cows don't stop milking just because of a storm. If we don't deliver, farmers don't get paid and consumers don't get milk. We refused to let Lili prevent us from bottling and delivering 63,000 gallons of milk. The power lines were playing skip rope as I headed out in 60-mile-per-hour winds. We had to move fast."

Power company crews worked overtime and restored service to the plant by 3 a.m. Manger Jim Williams credited the teamwork of employees, the hauler and DFA members for completing half the plant's normal deliveries that day and local routes resumed the next day.

"In a storm, the community is focused on immediate losses and forgets our cows have to be milked. We not only lose money but also our livelihood," said Dan Lyons, DFA member and dele gate who farms 90 miles from the Gulf. He milks 100 cows and has been a dairyman for 32 years. "It's nice to know we belong to a co-op that has had the foresight to put programs in place to help the dairy farmers through disaster."

For the DFA employees and members, it was another reminder of the cooperative's motto, "where a single drop of milk affects the entire organization."