State dairies consider milk quotas
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The audience listens to a speaker during the Vermont Farm Bureau meeting at the Holiday Inn on Friday. Vyto Starinskas / Rutland Herald |
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By JOSH O'GORMAN RUTLAND HERALD STAFF WRITER - Published: November 7, 2009
RUTLAND - Dairy farmers are to vote today on a proposal to impose mandatory limits on milk production.
Farmers from around the state are in Rutland this weekend for the 94th annual meeting and Conference of the Vermont Farm Bureau, at the Holiday Inn, and this morning, delegates are expected to decide if they would like to impose government-supervised limits on the amount of milk they produce.
Friday afternoon, delegates, farmers and those interested in the future of dairy farming discussed so-called "mandatory supply management," and Dan LaCoss, a dairy farmer from Barton, opened with a presentation that argued that the current method of milk production is unsustainable.
LaCoss noted that during the first six months of 2009, farmers received an average price of 99 cents a gallon for milk, compared with $1.59 a gallon during the same period in 2008. As a result, the average dairy farmer - with the state average of 128 cows - earned $64,741 less during the first six months of this year than he did in 2008.
Meanwhile, the cost for farmers to produce milk has remained steady at $1.65 a gallon, and that shortfall has forced dairy farmers this year to borrow between $850 and $1,000 per cow just to stay in business, LaCoss said.
LaCoss argued that any pricing plan will need the support of dairy consumers.
"I truly believe that if we don't have customers behind our industry, we won't have an industry that's sustainable in the future," he said.
To stabilize prices, farmers must stabilize production, argued Marie Audet, owner of Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, as she spoke on behalf of the group Dairy Farmers Working Together.
"We need a tool to hold production in check when needed," she said. "The only tools we have now when prices are low are to produce more milk, and when prices are good we produce more milk."
Audet's group's proposal is competing with, but is very similar to, a proposal from Brattleboro-based Holstein Association USA.
"Right now, the incentive is to put as much milk in the tank as you can," said Holstein USA representative Adam Griffin.
Both Audet's and Griffin's groups are proposing that each farm looks at its average dairy production during the last two or three years to establish a base, and that amount - plus between 1 and 3 percent to allow growth - would be the amount of milk a farmer could produce.
Any farmer who exceeds that base amount would be assessed a "market access fee," and those fees would be collected and distributed among the farmers who did not exceed their base amounts. The plan would establish a board composed of dairy farmers and would have government oversight, and the board would notify farmers when demand is rising or falling so they could adjust their production accordingly.
"What we want to do is produce for the market and not market all we produce," Griffin said.
The delegates are expected to vote on one of three proposals this morning: to continue the Farm Bureau's opposition to mandatory supply management; to adopt mandatory supply management or to support nonspecific supply management ideals.
josh.ogorman@rutlandherald.com
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