A poster, a meeting at the courthouse and a pool of vegetable growers.

Organic Valley is an American brand of organic milk, butter, cheese, eggs and other foods, owned by a cooperative of farmers. It did not begin under that name. English Wikipedia says the cooperative was founded in 1988 as CROPP, short for the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool, and that its headquarters are in La Farge, Wisconsin.

The company tells its own founding story in some detail. Its history page, in a version archived in May 2014, says the story starts in January 1988 with a handful of farmers in southwestern Wisconsin’s coulee region. According to the cooperative, a small poster invited area farmers to an informational meeting with George Siemon at the county courthouse about forming the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool, and that meeting created the momentum that carried the group forward.

A distributor’s profile of the time gives a similar account. A page published by United Natural Foods in June 2004 says Organic Valley began in 1988 when a group of Midwestern farmers joined to form the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool, also known as the CROPP cooperative, with the aim of creating a future for small family farms. The same page says the farmers are the owners of the company.

Vegetables came before milk. The cooperative’s 2014 history page says the group began by growing organic vegetables and soon added organic dairy products, and that when the demand it had anticipated proved real, it created the Organic Valley brand name and expanded its product line. English Wikipedia adds that the abbreviation CROPP was later re-read as Cooperative Regions of Organic Producer Pools, as the membership spread beyond the coulee country, and that the original CROPP farms were mostly in the Kickapoo River basin near the cooperative’s headquarters, which were built in 2004.

Siemon remained in charge until 2019. The local station WKBT reported on 15 March 2019 that, according to a company statement, he was one of the founders of Organic Valley in 1988. The cooperative’s 2014 history described him as a lifelong farmer whose family operated an organic farm in the valley of the Bad Axe River.

A cooperative in La Farge, a creamery in Oregon and a joint venture with Dean Foods.

Organic Valley has no outside owner. English Wikipedia describes it as an independent agricultural cooperative based in La Farge, and the United Natural Foods profile of 2004 said its farmers determine the price of their product. Wikipedia says the cooperative also sells beef, pork, turkey and chicken under a second brand, Organic Prairie, and that it completed a second office building on its Cashton campus in Wisconsin in March 2016.

The cooperative expanded west in 2016. Capital Press reported on 7 September 2016 that Organic Valley had announced it would buy and renovate the Farmers Cooperative Creamery in McMinnville, Oregon. The company said in its news release that its “regional model” meant milk was produced, bottled and distributed locally, the paper reported.

A partnership with a large processor followed. A press release carried by BevNET on 31 March 2017 said Organic Valley and Dean Foods had announced a joint venture in November 2016, and that from 28 March 2017 the venture was open for business, making Organic Valley fresh milk available through Dean Foods’ distribution network along with butter, half-and-half and cheese.

The Oregon plant was later rebuilt. Capital Press reported on 12 May 2023 that the McMinnville creamery had been heavily damaged by a fire that broke out during routine maintenance, destroying its main building. The cooperative rebuilt in phases, the paper said: work began on 4 October 2021, the plant was processing milk again in May 2022, and it now makes milk powder, pasteurized milk, half-and-half and cream.

Leadership has changed several times since 2019. WKBT reported on 15 March 2019 that Siemon had stepped down as chief executive and that the board had appointed Robert Kirchoff, who joined in 2016 as chief business officer, as interim CEO. On 12 January 2023 Organic Valley announced that Jeff Frank, who came from a long career at Hormel Foods and its MegaMex Foods venture, would become chief executive on 23 January. A release distributed by PR Newswire on 19 March 2025 then said Shawna Nelson, who joined the cooperative as an intern in 2005, would become CEO from 28 March 2025, as Frank left to lead Monogram Foods.

Design and documentation.

Eggs and fluid milk are among the plainest things in a grocery basket, and that plainness shapes how their packaging works. An egg carton has to protect a fragile product, stack in a chilled case and still tell a shopper at a glance what kind of eggs sit inside, so its lid, its colour and the words printed on it do most of the brand’s work. A milk jug or carton has a similar job: it has to be recognised quickly on a crowded shelf, often by a cap colour or a band of type, before anyone reads the small print.

Because the products inside can look alike from one name to the next, the brands in this group lean on labels, logos, carton shapes and advertising to set themselves apart. Some of the names belong to farmer-owned cooperatives, some to family companies and some to much larger food groups, and the name on the front does not always say which.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its eggs or milk are packed and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

CROPP behind the label, Organic Valley on it, and a chief executive called the C-E-I-E-I-O.

The brand has two names: CROPP is the cooperative’s original name, and Organic Valley is the brand name. The 2014 history page explains the order of events: the farmers formed the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool and created the Organic Valley name only once demand for their organic food was proven. English Wikipedia notes that the company is also known by the initials OV, and that its meat sits under the separate Organic Prairie name.

The place in the name is a real landscape. Wikipedia places the early CROPP farms around the Kickapoo River basin near La Farge, and the cooperative’s own history speaks of the coulee region of southwestern Wisconsin, where its founding meeting was held. A press release from March 2025 describes Nelson as born and raised in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, where the co-op was founded.

The cooperative’s vocabulary includes a farmyard pun. The United Natural Foods profile of June 2004 said Siemon preferred to be known as the “C-E-I-E-I-O” rather than the chief executive, and the company’s 2014 history page used the same title. The 2004 profile also described a web community called Mothers of Organic, which the cooperative ran to talk to parents about organic food.

The range on the shelf has grown from those vegetable beginnings. Capital Press listed Organic Valley’s products in September 2016 as organic milk, cheese, butter and eggs, among others, and the Dean Foods venture of 2017 added single-serve and ready-to-drink milks, according to the BevNET release. The company describes a “regional model”, with milk produced, bottled and distributed locally, Capital Press reported.

For a design guide, Organic Valley shows a cooperative name and a consumer brand name working side by side, with the farm landscape of one Wisconsin region carried onto a national label. Compare Horizon Organic, another American organic dairy brand, and Darigold, a dairy brand of the Pacific Northwest. For this guide we use coulee green, hay gold and cream with a soft serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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