Dairy panel meets for first time; farmers want help now
By Carol Stender
cstender@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 05/06/2010 9:27 AM
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WONEWOC, Wis. —The USDA Dairy Industry Advisory Committee had it's first meeting last week and already has reached a consensus.
The majority of the committee members favor immediate measures to help dairy farmers.
Both processors and dairy farmers on the committee agreed farmers need help in the short-term," said committee member and Wonewoc dairy farmer Jim Goodman. They also support a long-term solution to rid dairy markets of volatility.
The level of the short-term measures might be debated amongst farmers and processors but processors also want to keep dairy farmers in production, Goodman said. The processors don't want to lose any more producers.
"Like Jim Hightower says, 'Everyone does better when everyone does better,'" Goodman said.
During its first three-day meeting in Washington, D.C., April 13 to 15, the committee learned about USDA's dairy programs and heard from ag secretary Tom Vilsack. He had a warning for the dairy industry.
"I will tell you folks, it's got to happen," Vilsack said. "At some point in time, this industry has got to get control of itself...We can't continue to do this Band Aid approach where we increase the price support a little bit or we come up with additional resources in a time of difficulties, relative to the deficit. It's just not that easy to raise the e price support level because we have to have an offset, which means that some other aspect of agriculture could potentially suffer."
Goodman said Vilscack is right.
"We need a long-term pricing system that works and protects producers and can keep the supply in this country," Goodman said. "In the years I have been dairying, I have seen things change from a lot of small farms to a big system that doesn't give us much of a profit. The long-term picture is something we need. We need emergency relief right away otherwise we will see producers going out of the business before the end of the year."
Dairy farmers are still trying to recover from last year's low prices, Goodman said. There isn't much equity left on the farm and banks aren't lending.
"I don't know where farmers are going to go to buy the things they need this spring," he said. "It's not like you can ask for more credit because people can't get it."
The committee heard details of several proposals that could help with price volatility. Some of the programs, offered by farm groups and dairy organizations, may be introduced as legislation.
Associated Milk Producers Incorporated president and CEO Ed Welch has said the committee has some consensus on managing growth.
The group will meet again in June.