Senator looks to aid dairy farmers
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Struggling dairy farmers would get federal payments to cover production losses under a proposal by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who described the industry’s current financial situation as a national security issue.
At present, farms are getting less than $17 per hundredweight for milk, while the cost of production is $23.34.
The proposed Dairy Farm Sustainability Act, which Gillibrand wants to see included in the next five-year Farm Bill, would pay eligible farmers 45 percent of the difference.
“Dairy farmers have taken a severe hit for too long,” said Gillibrand, a Senate Agriculture Committee member. “Dairy insurance (the Margin Protection Program) isn’t paying out because it’s poorly designed.”
Congress is expected to start working on the next Farm Bill, which sets federal agricultural policy, in the next few weeks.
Unlike previous measures, Gillibrand said payments to dairy farmer payments would be adjusted for inflation, so funds would rise as production costs increase. However, she said her dairy proposal faces an uphill battle because both the House and Senate ag committees are dominated by officials from major livestock-and feed-producing states, in the Midwest and West.
“Dairy states aren’t well-represented on the ag committees,” she said. “That’s why I’m issuing an urgent plea for dairy producers to speak out and contact their elected officials, to support this proposal.”
There are about 4,000 dairy farms in New York alone, one of the country’s leading milk producers.
“This is a matter of national security and making sure our rural communities survive,” Gillibrand said.
In the event of a major disaster, manmade or natural, the U.S. can’t afford to rely on dairy imports from other countries, she said.
From an all-time record high in 2014, the price farms get for milk has plummeted drastically and is about the same now as it was in 2004. However, the cost of production, largely driven by increased feed prices, is much higher now.
So farms are forced to get by with the same income they had 14 years ago, while expenses -- also including fuel, labor and taxes -keep rising.
“By this measure .... early 2018 is looking bad,” said Andrew M. Novakovic, Cornell University E.V.
Baker professor of agricultural economics. “The duration of the financial malaise of the last three years is part of the issue. It is the long scrape versus the deep cut, as I call it. Previous downturns in dairy profitability have been deeper, but didn’t last long. The below-average returns have persisted for so long now that it’s testing the endurance of farmers who have strategies to get through a bad year, but not three years.”