Dairy experts doubt deal will reverse decline
Farmer: Pact with Canada is ‘more of the same’
U.S. dairy farmers remain hopeful a new trade deal with Canada could help lift them out of a deep slump, but some are casting doubt it will make much of a difference in an American market flooded with milk.
The deal, announced Monday by President Donald Trump, is “more of the same,” except it hurts Canadian farmers, said
Jim Goodman, a Wisconsin dairy farmer and president of the National Family Farm Coalition.
“Canadian family farms will go out of business, and Canadian dairy farmers will see their incomes fall due to increased U.S. imports. And while the slightly expanded market will offer small benefits to some U.S. farmers, it does nothing to reduce the overproduction at the heart of our dairy crisis,” Goodman said.
The new deal is called the United States-MexicoCanada Agreement. Under the terms, still being finalized, Canada would open more of its dairy market to trade and has agreed to drop its quota and pricing system for “Class 7” milk powders – a move that could help the struggling American dairy industry as it seeks export markets.
But it opens only about 3.6 percent of Canada’s market for dairy, poultry and eggs to the U.S., and that’s not much for American farmers.
“The impacts will be minimal. Canada’s entire dairy market is smaller than that of Wisconsin,” Goodman said.
Tensions over the North American Free Trade Agreement were heightened last year when Canada raised tariffs on ultrafiltered milk used to make cheese and other dairy products. Exports that had grown to $102 million skidded to a halt at a time when America’s dairy industry, then in its third consecutive year of low prices, was losing money and farms. The new pact could restore some lost sales, and it could set the stage for making trade deals with countries in the Asia Pacific region.
“The export story is probably the silver lining in the dark cloud that hangs over the dairy industry today,” said Tom Vilsack, U.S. agriculture secretary from 2009 to 2017. Details are still being ironed out, but the trade deal is a positive development, said Vilsack, now president of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, an industry trade group. “It’s fair to say that it should provide stability in the dairy markets because now we know for certain that the United States is not going to get
“The likelihood that a revised NAFTA will resolve the low prices that U.S. dairy farmers have been experiencing the last several years is fairly limited.”
Veronica Nigh An American Farm Bureau Federation economist
out of the trilateral relationship with Mexico and Canada,” Vilsack said.
Still, in the short run, the deal isn’t likely to raise the price U.S. farmers receive for their milk – which in some cases has been below their cost of production. “The amount of milk we’re going to be able to move into Canada is pretty insignificant,” Goodman said.
“The likelihood that a revised NAFTA will resolve the low prices that U.S. dairy farmers have been experiencing the last several years is fairly limited,” said Veronica Nigh, an American Farm Bureau Federation economist.
In a global market awash in dairy products, prices have skidded, and many U.S. farmers have burned through their savings and farm equity to remain in business.
“The dairy hole is so deep, and people have lost so much money, it’s going to take a lot to get out of the hole,” said Zack Clark, government relations director for the National Farmers Union.
While consumers have been eating more cheese and yogurt in recent years, keeping many farms afloat, sales of milk as a beverage have been declining for decades. Americans consume about the same number of gallons of beverages as they did years ago, but they’re drinking a lot less milk. A flood of new beverages, including bottled water, sports drinks, bottled teas and soy and almond drinks have taken a toll on milk sales.
The gallon milk jug was invented to feed a nation that, decades ago, was largely eating most meals at home as a family. But now, things such as breakfast cereal swimming in milk have been replaced by fast-food egg sandwiches or a bagel at work.
“Cereal accounts for almost 25 percent of the (milk) decline … and we aren’t going to be able to turn around the cereal industry,” said Paul Ziemnisky, a vice president at Dairy Management Inc., a trade group that promotes dairy products.
The prices farmers receive for their milk should improve some in coming months, industry experts say, but that’s from market forces rather than the trade deal, which hasn’t been approved by the three countries yet and could take years to fully implement.
U.S. dairy experts say questions remain about whether Canada will find another way to dump milk on the international market, lowering prices for American farmers. “That’s one of the reasons why we aren’t doing backwards somersaults over this deal,” said Jim Mulhern, president of the National Milk Producers Federation, a U.S. industry trade group.
Canadian dairy farmers will be hurt because the trade deal reduces their milk supply protections, such as import quotas.
“It could ruin the livelihood of thousands of farm families in Canada,” said Mark Kastel, co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin group that monitors agricultural issues. “The race to the bottom that’s been so injurious to family farmers in the U.S. might have just been exported to Canada.”
Dairy Farmers of Canada said it was disappointed. The trade group said it “fails to see how this deal can be good for the 220,000 Canadian families that depend on dairy for their livelihood.”
U.S. consumers probably won’t notice a difference in dairy product prices at the grocery store. “I don’t see a big resurgence in prices because of it,” said Bob Wellington, an economist for Agri-Mark, a Northeast cooperative based in Andover, Massachusetts, which represents 900 farms.