Official: Dairy crisis threatens idea of Vt.
Toolbox
By Susan Smallheer Staff Writer - Published: November 10, 2009
SPRINGFIELD — Vermont dairy farmers are losing an average of $120 a month per cow, and the state has lost 53 dairy farms since January, Agriculture Secretary Roger Allbee said Monday.
The unprecedented crisis threatens not just the dairy industry, but people's idea of Vermont, Allbee told a meeting of the Springfield Rotary Club.
Allbee said this weekend's action by the Vermont Farm Bureau to vote for the first time in favor of a mandatory supply mechanism to control the production of milk "added another voice" to many demanding change in how farmers are paid for their milk.
The Vermont Farm Bureau's old policy supported voluntary dairy supply management.
But the new resolution said the farm bureau "supports dairy supply management initiatives such as the CWT Program, (Cooperatives Working Together)," said Jackie Folsom, president of the Vermont Farm Bureau, in an e-mail Monday.
The goal is creating great price stability, she said. "We support a state, national and industry supported, long term counter-cyclical program addressing the volatility in milk price that will provide for the viability of agriculture," she said.
Any program should recognize the need for regional production of milk, for food security purposes, she added. Mandatory management is not the same as a quota system, like Canada has.
Milk costs farmers about $1.96 a gallon to produce, and they get paid 96 cents, Allbee said, virtually the same price they received in 1975.
Allbee said he didn't know how long the remaining 1,025 Vermont dairy farms could hang on, considering their losses are mounting and there is no solution in sight. The average size of a Vermont dairy farm is 130 cows.
"They are eating into their equity," Allbee said. While the price farmers receive is rising slightly, it is by no means enough to offset the price of production, he said.
Allbee said that a recent poll by the University of Vermont showed that 97 percent of Vermonters were in favor of "the working landscape," but that landscape is in danger of disappearing if the price of milk doesn't recover.
The dairy crisis has hit home in Springfield, as one of its landmark farms, Mooreland Farms, stopped milking cows this summer and several people said they were worried that the town's remaining dairy farms were in jeopardy.
At least one man said he was upset with seeing ads on television promoting "the happy cows in California," when the overproduction of milk in California and other western states was partly to blame for the Vermont crisis.
The Vermont Farm Bureau vote, taken over the weekend during the group's annual meeting in Rutland, was not a vote in favor of a quota, said Folsom.
The group came out in favor of a variation of "supply control," Allbee, who was at the meeting, said.
Since the milk crisis has hit Vermont, milk production has dropped significantly, he said, putting the figure at 4 percent.
And that is even while there is a milk shortage, east of the Mississippi River, he said.
But the vote, taken after much discussion, was unanimous by both the dairy and nondairy farmers who are members of the agricultural group, that milk production has to be controlled in order to keep the price closer to the costs of production.
The resolution was not binding, but it is a departure from national farm bureau policy, Allbee said.
Allbee said that the farm bureau was only the latest voice in calling for some mandatory system, including the New England Governors Conference, both dairy cooperatives in the state, Agri-Mark and the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery.
"It's setting the stage for Congress," he said, adding that he believed it would be early next year before Congress gets to addressing the dairy price problem.
susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com
37