Ag chief's visit to Vt. spans farm divide
Toolbox
By Thatcher Moats
STAFF WRITER - Published: February 14, 2010
BURLINGTON - The top agriculture official in the nation made a rare visit to Vermont on Saturday, attending two farm-related events in Burlington that featured two strikingly different atmospheres.
The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, joined a dairy "town meeting" at the Hilton Hotel, making him the first USDA secretary to come to Vermont in the last 20 years.
The dairy farmers at the meeting made it clear with a sense of urgency that they continue to face the crisis that arose more than a year ago when milk prices plummeted well below the cost of production, and they want the broken system fixed.
Later Vilsack attended the annual conference of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, or NOFA, where he gave the keynote address to a packed and boisterous crowd in Ira Allen Chapel at the University of Vermont.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Patrick Leahy, and Rep. Peter Welch joined Vilsack as he talked to dairy farmers and heard their concerns.
Bob Foster, a Vermont dairy farmer who acted as a spokesman for the local industry, ended a prepared statement to officials with his take on the problem.
"Personally, in my view, the Northeast dairy farmers, and the support structures - which include the vets, the banks, the machinery dealers, the feed dealers - are quite literally bleeding to death financially right now," Foster said.
Though the price of conventional milk has risen from its low of about $11 per 100 pounds in the spring of 2009 to around $16 or $17 per hundredweight, one farmer said, dairy farmers say the price still doesn't meet the cost of production and something needs to be done about the vicious boom-and-bust cycle that makes dairying so difficult.
The nearly unanimous consensus at the meeting was that a "supply management" system is the solution. That has been the focus of a group called Dairy Farmers Working Together, to which Marie Audet, a Bridport dairy farmer, belongs.
Audet said milk surpluses create price drops, which spur farmers to produce more milk to make up the losses - a cycle that feeds on itself and hasn't yet been solved. She said a 2 percent surplus in the milk industry can lead to a 35 percent to 45 recent price collapse. With this knowledge, it became pretty clear what needs to happen, she said.
"So all of a sudden it was like simple economics: We need to make sure a surplus doesn't happen," she said. "In order to do that, since we have no tools, we have to come up with a tool to match supply with demand."
Audet and others at the meeting were advocating for a system that somehow penalizes farmers for overproduction.
Vilsack would not say Saturday what he thinks of a supply management system or be specific about what he believes would solve dairy farmers' problems. He said a dairy council has formed that will be looking into it.
"I don't want to pre-judge or pre-direct their deliberations," Vilsack said. "I will say this: It is fairly clear there has to be some process in place that creates greater price stability."
The second agricultural event of the day brought together farmers and others interested in the burgeoning organic farm movement. In its 28th year, the NOFA conference continues to grow, organizers said, and Vilsack offered statistics from a recent survey that indicates the organic food sector is "strong and growing" and "here to stay."
Sanders - who praised locally grown, organic, healthy food - rallied the crowd with a speech that drew shouts of approval.
"I think it is clear that although the obstacles and opposition remain very, very strong - Monsanto and their friends are very powerful multinational corporations - the momentum is with us," he said.
Two organic dairy farmers from Randolph Center at the NOFA conference said they solved the milk-price problem by going organic.
"Organic production has basically been a lifeline," said Brent Beidler, who along with his wife, Regina Beidler, runs a 35-head dairy farm.
Thanks to an arrangement with their milk co-op, Organic Valley, they have a "price floor" that means they won't be paid less than about $28 per hundredweight. There are rewards based on milk quality, and the Beidlers said they have been getting more than $30 per hundredweight lately.
That's enough for them to make a living, they said.
That hasn't been the experience of conventional dairy farmers who don't have a price floor, and a former conventional dairy farmer from Alburgh who attended the meeting at the Hilton believes many large dairy co-operatives are not on the side of the farmers.
"When milk prices are low, the profits are really big" for the large co-op, Dairy Farmers of America, claims Roger Rainville. "People say: 'Well, DFA is a farmer-owned co-op.' Well, that's bull."
"I don't have proven facts that they're not working in our favor," added Rainville. "But if they were, we wouldn't be having this meeting."
10