Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) has accepted 29 requests for export assistance from Bongards Creameries, Dairy Farmers of America, Foremost Farms USA, Maryland Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association and Tillamook County Creamery Association to sell 5.758 million pounds of Cheddar, Gouda and Monterey Jack cheese and 551,156 pounds of butter to customers in Asia, Central America, the Middle East and North Africa. The product will be delivered January through June 2014.
Year-to-date, CWT has assisted member cooperatives in selling 8.494 million pounds of cheese and 3.542 million pounds of butter to 12 countries on four continents. These sales are the equivalent of 158 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis.
Assisting CWT members through the Export Assistance program positively impacts producer milk prices in the short-term by helping to maintain inventories of cheese and butter at desirable levels. In the long-term, CWT’s Export Assistance program helps member cooperatives gain and maintain market share, thus expanding the demand for U.S. dairy products and the farm milk that produces them.
CWT will pay export assistance to the bidders only when delivery of the product is verified by the submission of the required documentation.
The Export Assistance program is funded by voluntary contributions from dairy cooperatives and individual dairy farmers. The money raised by their investment is being used to strengthen and stabilize the dairy farmers’ milk prices and margins. For more information about CWT, visit www.cwt.coop.
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