Feeding Cows Surplus Milk is Udder Insanity

"I will grant the rain for your land in season... I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle..." 

Deuteronomy 11:14-15 

America is suffering through an unprecedented drought. Much of our nation has seen little rain, and many farmers have no grass to cut into hay. The cattle are starving. 

It's been a long winter. The drought will continue, and it should be a longer and more disastrous summer for farmers, particularly dairy farmers. They are all losing money. Fuel costs have increased. Feed costs are rising. Milk prices continue to decrease, so they overproduce, flooding the market with a product nobody wants or needs. Their downward spiral continues to accelerate. 

This week (April 8, 2003), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that they would send hundreds of millions of pounds of subsidized milk powder, which they had previously purchased from dairy farmers, back to those same dairymen to feed their cows. 

Well, at least they've found some use for unwanted dehydrated milk powder that nobody else wants, but at whose expense? Does this new program make any sense? 

Farmers will receive enough non-fat powder to feed each cow two pounds of milk each day for the next month. USDA has over 1 billion pounds of nonfat dry milk in storage. 

Eleven pounds of whole milk are required to produce one pound of dry milk powder. If cows are fed two pounds of milk powder, which USDA purchased from these same cows, then each cow will be expected to produce 22 pounds of new milk. Of course, it took 22 pounds of milk to manufacture those two pounds of milk powder. Since there is a surplus, that new milk will most likely be converted into new dried milk powder. 

The new milk powder will be stored for a year, then shipped back to these same farms to feed these same cows to produce more milk to be converted into more milk powder. The cows will have calves. Half of the calves will be males. They will be killed or sold for veal. The other half will be raised to become dairy cows. They will be milked. They will produce more surplus milk to be converted into, yeah, you've got it. 

In eight years of bearing witness to dairy stories, this is the one which makes me want to scream the loudest. 

Robert Cohen

http://www.notmilk.com

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