USDA secretary asked to help increase milk prices

A group of 61 members of the U.S. Senate and House have sent a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asking him to take action to raise prices dairies across the country are paid for their milk. By David Castellon.
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“We write today to express our concern about the troubling economic challenges facing U.S. dairy farmers and the entire U.S. dairy industry,” states the letter sent Thursday by lawmakers that included California Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno.
Milk prices have been on a decline nationally since 2009, though they did peak briefly to record-high levels in 2014 before declining again.
“In California, milk production has been in decline for more than 18 months, and dairies across the state continue to close,” California Dairy Campaign President Joe Augusto said in a press release in which he commended the lawmakers for their bipartisan action.
California dairies have been particularly hard hit by the declining milk prices, as the state has its own pricing system that dairy operators here have complained gives them less money for their milk than dairies in most other states get under the federally-run milk-pricing system.
“California dairy producers are paid some of the lowest mailbox prices in the country,” according to the CDC press release, which noted that the average cost to produce a hundredweight (100 pounds) of milk was $18.44 in the first quarter of 2016, but producers received only $13.61 in March.
“When dairies close and milk production declines, it has a ripple effect on the local, regional and state economy,” Augusto continued in his written statement. “It is critical that immediate action is taken to provide relief to dairy farmers to prevent more dairies from closing their doors.”
As such, California dairy operators have been working in recent years to get the California off the state’s pricing system and transferred to the federal Milk Marketing Orders.
If that happens, California dairies might benefit from slightly better prices for their milk, though they still would remain low unless milk prices improve nationally.
“Current expectations are that the dairy market will continue to struggle with depressed prices, and we seek your help to search for ways to swiftly assist our nation’s struggling dairy farmers,” states the letter to Vilsack, which notes that current dairy prices are about 40 percent below what they were in 2014.
“Our dairy farmers have been hit extremely hard by low farm milk prices that have resulted in sharply reduced incomes, which is placing our nation’s dairy industry in an extremely vulnerable position,” it continues.
“It is critical that Congress and USDA work together to provide relief to dairy farm families, or more dairies will go out of operation,” CDC Executive Director Lynne McBride said in a written statement.
Her organization, along with the National Farmers Union and dairy farm organizations and cooperatives across the country lobbied members of Congress and the Senate to urge USDA to provide relief for dairies.
Among the reasons for the current low milk prices cited in the letter are U.S. milk production is up 2 percent, which tend to lower prices, and milk production in other countries also is up.
The lawmakers go on in their letter to ask the secretary of agriculture to “take any and all actions available in order to make an immediate market injection and offer financial assistance that will directly support U.S. dairy farmers equally, while being cautious to not stimulate overproduction further.”
No specific action is requested, though the letter urges Vilsack to use his secretarial authority under the Commodity Credit Corporation Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, as well as “to look past precedent for how to take action to protect all our nation’s dairy farmers from further crisis and to aid in the expansion and maintenance of domestic markets.”
 
Source: VisaliaTimesDelta
Link: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/local/2016/07/28/usda-secretary-asked-help-increase-milk-prices/87692374/
 

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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