New 9.11 Terror Devastates Dairyland

On January 1st of this year, I predicted: 

"This year, they (dairy farmers) will be netting under 21 cents per quart." 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/notmilk/message/1157 

(On New Year's Day 1999, dairy farmers were receiving 37.3 cents per quart of milk.) 

In that New Year's Day column, I forecasted that milk prices would continue to drop, falling from November's low of $9.84 per hundredweight to $9.75 per hundred pounds. I was wrong. Reality became a penny worse. Class III Milk prices (milk used to manufacture cheese) settled at $9.74 cents. That reflected December's prices. 

What's the latest? 

Farmers continue to produce more milk, despite the fact that there is an enormous surplus. 

The February prices for Class III milk brought horrible news to dairy farmers. Prices hit rock bottom, at $9.66 per hundredweight. Most dairy experts agreed that surely, they could fall no lower. 

On Friday, April 4th, USDA announced the March price for Class III milk, and for dairymen, news of the skim has become even more grim. The price dropped another 55 cents fo $9.11 cents per hundredweight. How symbolic: 9-11 will destroy thousands of dairy farms. 

Ouch. Dairymen now average 19.6 cents for a quart of milk. That's 17.7 cents less per quart than they netted four years ago during the Clinton administration. Damned thing is that milk prices have not gone down in supermarkets. While dairymen suffer, somebody has been playing these hard-working altruistic Americans for fools. 

So what do dairymen do now? Continue to produce more milk as they have been doing and add to the surplus? Advice to dairy farmers. Get down on your hands and knees, and pray, facing Mecca. Perhaps a longer war will create a need for USDA to rid themselves of additional subsidized dried milk powder, butter, and cheese. Perhaps we'll constipate the nation of Iraq in the process. That will create the mother of all explosive situations. Stand back. This could get messy. 

In January of 2002, the state of Maine had 462 dairy farms. Today, Maine has just 412 farms. One year from today they will have 300 or less dairies. 

Governor Gov. John Baldacci has unveiled a new welfare plan for Maine's dairymen which promises too little, too late. Four million dollars of tax money will be given to dairy farmers as temporary relief from lower milk prices. That averages out to ten thousand dollars per farm. People who have joined the ranks of Maine's unemployed get nothing. Nothing for warehouse workers. Nothing for teachers. Nothing for truck drivers. 

Other states are reacting by creating disguised welfare changes. California is changing their pricing formula policy which will pump an immediate $14 million towards factory farms. Michigan is passing laws protecting dairies from development, sending enormous subsidies to land-owners in exchange for a dairy farmer's promise not to sell out to real estate syndicators. 

Politicians, one and all, and dairy farmers should come to terms with this one truth. As more and more Americans recognize that milk does not do the body any good, less milk will be consumed. We witness the destruction of an industry that made Americans obese and ill. Good riddance. Recognize subsidy payments fo dairymen as throwing good money after bad. One do not apply Bandaids to burst aortas. Let dying patients die with dignity. 

Robert Cohen http://www.notmilk.com

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