Churning A Living

Butter or margarine? Well we're not going to solve that age-old debate here. But if you are a butter lover, there's a good chance that some of that butter you've spread on your bread in the morning or maybe pour on your popcorn at night; came from the state of Minnesota. The Associated Milk Producers Incorporated butter plant looms large in the small town of New Ulm, Minnesota. The plant churns out 120 million pounds of butter a year. AMPI's butter plant Manager, Bill Swan says, "To get an idea of how much that is, 120 million pounds is about 50 miles worth of semis, bumper to bumper." Cream gets delivered daily on tanker trucks. Don't let all of the huge machines and maze of stainless steel pipes inside the AMPI plant fool you; making butter is essentially the same process it's always been.

Swan explains, "We check all the ingredients before we use them. Mostly in butter, it's pretty simple. It's sweet cream and salt." Of course churning isn't done by hand anymore. Giant computer-controlled machines churn the cream into smooth, flowing butter. AMPI is a cooperative, owned by 35-hundred dairy farmers spread across six states. The farmers supply milk to AMPI everyday, not just for butter. AMPI also makes cheese, cheese sauce, pudding and of course, milk. CEO of AMPI, Mark Furth says, "We're not interested in branching out into other businesses. We're interested in doing those things that help the market of milk of those farms and market the most.beneficially."

While making butter hasn't changed much over the years, consumer demands and production necessities have altered the way that butter makes its way to homes and restaurants. At AMPI it goes into tubs for restaurants across the country. Boxes, for large-scale food operations. Tiny butter cups and wrapped butter packets that have a name of their own known as "the continentals." And of course, sticks of butter that end up in your refrigerator.

Swan explains part of the process, "There's an electric photo eye that tells the machine where the paper needs to be cut. The paper end feed brings it into the folding box. The plunger has pushed the paper through the folding box to create the side corner. We then check with a set of fingers to make sure that the paper made it into the mold. We then fill, fold the side, seal, tap down to knock out any air spaces that might be within the mold and then we lift out to the cartoning." All-in-all the process churns out 65 pounds of butter a minute.

It's an impressive facility, especially considering this butter plant was destroyed by fire in 2001. The devastating fire ruined millions of dollars of equipment and sent three million pounds of melted butter flowing into the street. Swan says, "It took about a year to get back on our feet, had a lot of help from, actually some competitors helped us out to keep us alive. But where we had thought that maybe our business would be a little smaller after the fire, it's done nothing but grow."

And some good news for butter producers in the butter vs. margarine battle: After years of watching butter customers move towards margarine, producers have seen a resurgence in the popularity of butter recently. When asked if Swan likes the taste of butter, he responds with, "Absolutely! Everything is better with butter!"

A Bit About Butter
Some say butter was first "discovered" when milk, being carried in skins on horseback, "churned" itself into the creamy concoction. And dairy farmers in the in the Middle Ages, looking to make butter brighter, colored it with petals from marigold flowers.