Bryce Cunningham Explains How He Founded Mossgiel Organic Dairy

Bryce Cunningham says the idea for Mossgiel Organic Dairy emerged from watching farmers go out of business, including his own family. The farm became insolvent after a period of low milk prices, an experience that shaped his view of how dairy products were sold and valued.

He describes milk as having become an anonymous product on supermarket shelves, with little indication of where it came from. Cunningham concluded that milk did not have to be treated solely as a commodity and sought to create a business that linked the product more clearly to its farm and farmers.

Mossgiel is certified organic. Its cattle are fed on pasture, the farm does not use pesticides or genetically modified organisms, and the milk is supplied in packaging designed for reuse. The dairy presents these practices as producing what it calls Gold Standard milk.

Financing the business has been difficult, Cunningham says, because dairy requires substantial capital and conventional funders were not always equipped to support a non-standard model. The company sought private investment, but some investors questioned how its financial model could work because their experience of the industry suggested narrow margins.

In 2024, Mossgiel raised money through a community-equity crowdfunding campaign. Cunningham says the fundraising required investors to support more than a dairy operation: they were being asked to back a different approach to the industry. He adds that the business was built as a dairy with traceable provenance outside the conventional system.

Cunningham identifies one business regret: he did not stop unsuccessful initiatives quickly enough. He says he has been stronger at starting projects than ending them, and that time, money and emotional investment can make it difficult to abandon an idea. His subsequent lesson was that preserving a failing project can take energy away from a more viable one.

Asked what he would have changed, Cunningham says he would have had greater confidence in the scale of the business being built. During periods focused on keeping the operation running, he viewed the work as survival; in retrospect, he says, Mossgiel was establishing the foundations of a larger dairy business based on provenance.