USA TODAY International Edition
Holy cow! Too much milk?
Global glut is forcing family dairies to close, leading for calls to voluntarily lower production
The dairy industry is facing a global glut of milk, threatening to force farmers out of business amid calls to voluntarily lower production.
“We have friends in Ireland and Europe in the same situation. There’s just too much milk in the world,” said George Crave, president of Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese in Waterloo, Wis.
In Wisconsin, home to much of the nation’s dairy industry, producers are doing what they can to cope, including helping each other out. Farm cooperatives have told their members to think twice about adding more cows to their operations in a business climate awash in milk.
“We have to strategically plan for every drop now,” said Joan Behr, spokeswoman for Foremost Farms USA, a Baraboo, Wis.- based cooperative owned by about 1,300 dairy farmers. “As our members look at their futures, and their plans for growth, they have to be in lock- step communication with us.”
Some say the flood of milk has resulted from decades of government policies that have encouraged large- scale agricultural production.
It has been devastating for small farms, said Mark Kastel, co- founder of The Cornucopia Institute, an organic farming watchdog group based in Cornucopia, Wis.
“It has been death by a thousand cuts for Wisconsin family- scale dairy farms over the past few decades. An unfair and uneven playing field has allowed factory farms to muscle out” smaller operations, Kastel said.
Wisconsin dairy cows continue to produce more milk than ever before. In March, the total was 2.59 billion pounds, up 1.5% from a year earlier, and the 35th consecutive month of year- to- year increases.
Nationwide, a record 17.5 billion pounds was produced in the 23 major dairy states, up about 2% from March 2016, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
Instead of constantly increasing production, dairy farms would be better off making sure there’s a market for their products first, said Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union.
“We seem to be doing just the opposite,” he said.
Thursday, President Trump reiterated that Canada was to blame for the current crisis and that he’s seeking a solution. Canadians have faulted the U. S. for producing too much milk.
One of Wisconsin’s largest family- owned cheese factories, Mullins Cheese, has tossed a lifeline to eight dairy farms that were at risk of closing from a trade dispute with Canada.
“My field staff looked at them and said, ‘ My gosh, these are great, wonderfully kept farms,’ ” said Bill Mullins, the Mosinee, Wis., cheese company’s vice president. “I had an opportunity to help a few of them.”
But while Mullins has signed contracts to buy milk from the eight family- owned dairy operations, dozens of others haven’t been as fortunate. They face a May 1 deadline for when they no longer have a milk processor and could be forced to shut down.