12/22/08 Milk production, prices expected to drop

The USDA has revised its milk production forecast for 2008-2009. World Outlook Board Chairman Gerry Bange says production will down and so will milk per cow. He's predicting milk prices to be 15 to 24 percent lower than the previous year. BANGE "Looking at a Class III price now of $14.90 per hundredweight. A Class IV price of $11.20 per hundredweight and an all-milk price of $15.35." The Cooperative Working Together program will continue next year. National Milk Producer's Federation spokesman Chris Galen says CWT members are committed to paying for the dairy self-help program. GALEN "We need to have some tool at our disposal that farmers can use to do something about supply because you've either got to reduce supply or increase demand or both to turn prices around." This is the second dairy herd retirement this year, the sixth round since CWT began in the summer of 2003. GALEN "We have our field auditors going out to about 180 farms right now to remove 61 thousand cows that produced about 1.2 billion pounds of milk and most of the cows and the milk are coming out of the western parts of the country, California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona." Galen says the current herd retirement program should be completed by the end of next month. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott