Posted on 07/10/2009 5:13:45 PM PDT by george76
Dairy farmers in Northeast Wisconsin are feeling the pain at the pump...the milk pump that is.
Mark Petersen, a third generation farmer ... tells that prices for his milk have plummeted on the market, and he's really feeling the pinch. Petersen says he's only getting around ten dollars per hundred pounds of milk produced right now. He was getting 20 dollars per hundred pounds not too long ago. And his operational costs exceed his revenue. Not good, of course.
consumers have seen milk prices at the store come down, but it's not proportionate to what farmers are losing.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbc26.com ...
farmers can expect the price of milk to continue to fall in the coming months, while the cost of production steadily climbs. A depressed market combined with product oversupply has already resulted in farm closings across the state.
In what’s being called an “industry crisis,” Vermont dairy farmers have experienced record lows in the per hundredweight price
http://www.valleyreporter.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2494&ac=0&Itemid=38
“The problem, some feel, is there is too much milk production taking place right now. State Senator Alan Lasee (R) believes something needs to be done to restrain milk production. If not, he worries some dairy farmers could go out of business. Just how to put caps on milk production is another story that has no easy answer, as farmers tend to be an independent lot. And it’s not like the oil business, where production can just be cut in a hurry. Milk, in other words, has a shelf life, and you can’t just sit on it.”
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“Caps on milk production”? How about we just do away with this New England Dairy price-fixing Compact and let the market work?
I keep thinking of how tobacco farmers started to prosper when, just a few years ago, tobacco was taken completely off the government dole (and price controls, and growing restrictions, etc.) and farmers could grow as much tobacco wherever the heck they chose and the price was left to the market.
The WSJ had a very interesting article as to how well tobacco farmers are doing these days.
Whole herds of dairy cows are being sold for meat in Kalifornia because of the higher costs and price-controlled milk. State controls the prices !!
Also, all the new taxes Kalifornia is trying to impose, and at the same time, they are taking water away from over 80,000 farmers in the San Joaquin Valley in central Kalifornia to ‘protect’ the Delta smelt- a totally non-commercial fish.
Total destruction of the dairy farmers who support “Happy Cows make California cheese”.
Speaking as a farmers’ market manager of 12 years experience, these farmers need to respond to market forces. If wholesale prices aren’t to your liking, retail your product for increased profit. Go into organics and cheese making. If you continue to be a jobber for processors, you’ll always lose.
The dairies in the San Joaquin Valley of California are upside down and the banks and Farm Credit providing the financing are most likely sucking air too.
I suppose we’re going to see a replay of “Grapes of Wrath” and watch milk being poured on the ground and dairy cows shot?
Ground beef on sale aisle 6.
You can buy a half-gallon of milk for 67 cents at Fry’s in Arizona this week (60 cents with senior discount). That’s got to be hurting the farmers.
Globalists will have far greater control of citizens if they control food supplies.
Follow the money trail
The lenders are upside down...along with the dairymen. Tough deal. The numbers do not cruch at all.
Isn’t most milk sold through co-ops? So the gouging can’t be at the producer level. It must be at the dairy or retailer.
If the farmer sold a gallon for $2 two years ago and now $1 per gallon...he is likely losing money on every gallon.
Doubt that his expenses dropped the same.
Strange. Here in New York our brain dead politicians are investigating what they call price gouging by this state’s milk producers.
A local dairy farmer said that prices are tied to the price of cheese on the Chicago Exchange. Is that nationwide or just NY? He said it was an FDR thing from the 30’s.
Funny. Retail milk prices have been going up here.
What is ti? A gallon of milk is about 10 pounds? Thats 10 cents a gallon they are getting. So a normal cow milks about 40 pounds. That’s 4 bucks a cow. A 50 cow heard will milk about 1500 to 1600 pounds a day..got to figure in the dry cows as all 50 dont produce at the same time. Then figure in the electrical rates for milking and running bunk feeders and silo unloaders etc, the diesel to make the crops to feed all those cows, vet care, EPA rules and regs (yes they have to abide by eviro rules) and seed, and on and on. Its a hell of a way to make a living. Plus its a 7/24 job for the family farmer.
Id be growing wacky weed..the heck with them tail swishing tempermental boogers.
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