It's just what it sounds like -- making a value-added product on the farm from a raw agricultural material, in this case MILK. In the old days lots of farmers' wives made butter and cheese for sale to their neighbors. But over the years farms have given up these direct sales, mostly because of increased regulation, and now most sell only raw milk to big dairy cooperatives, who ship the milk thousands of miles. What farmers get paid for this milk sometimes doesn't even cover their costs, while processors make big bucks on "value-added" products that consist of over-processed milk, further corrupted by a variety of chemicals, artificial flavors, colors, packaging and other treatments.
Small dairy farms are on the edge, being pushed out by large farms that are producing too much milk, which causes prices paid to the farmers to go down, though retail prices rise due to fancy packaging. Making dairy products on the farm gives the mom-and-pop operation a chance to recapture some of the profits ordinarily lost to middlemen, while offering consumers a closer link to the source of their dairy foods and, in most cases, more wholesome products.
In Europe there are small-scale cheesemakers everywhere, who make hundreds of different cheeses, each unique to a region, or even to the individual producer. Today, the farmstead dairy movement is growing rapidly in the U.S.
Artisanal or artisan products are those made using traditional methods. This category includes farmstead and artisan producers. Farmstead dairy products are generally defined as those made on the farm, using milk from that farm's own animals. An artisan producer purchases milk from another dairy, instead of (or in addition to) raising his or her own dairy animals.
Artisanal production should not necessarily be regarded as inferior to farmstead. It is very difficult for one family farm to manage both livestock and food production and, in fact, most farmstead cheesemakers (yogurt-makers, etc.) separate the two facets of the business. They often employ outside help once the business is too large for the immediate family, so in many cases the only difference is that the farm is large enough and prosperous enough to contain both aspects of the business.
How the milk is produced and treated is far more important than whether the product is labeled "farmstead" or "artisan." In an extreme example, one farmstead cheese might be made from the milk of confined Holstein cows treated with artificial hormones (the industry standard), while an artisanal cheese might be produced from the fresh milk from a farm where Jersey cows (or goats or sheep) graze on fresh green grass.
There are some instances where farmers send their milk to a factory to be bottled or made into cheese, where traditional methods are not used. This is not true artisan or farmstead processing, and should be referred to as "custom" processing. But even here, the production and treatment of the milk are the most important factors. Each case is different. Carefully read descriptions of any product that claims to be "farmstead" or "artisanal."
