Tough times for dairy: A new Ag Director

Washington Ag February 16, 2009 In a report last week the USDA forecast an all milk average price for 2009 of $10.95 to $11.65 a hundredweight. Dairy market analyst Alan Levitt says that is the lowest since 1978. It also represents a price decline of about seven dollars a hundredweight from last year. The economic down turn world wide is viewed as the culprit. Kima Simonson and her husband operate a 100 cow dairy in Deer Park, Washington and they are already feeling the impact of falling producer milk prices. Simonson: “It is tough! It’s tough! The price we receive on the farm for our milk dropped 40% in the last month. We get paid per hundredweight, for 100 pounds we produce and that price on the hundredweight has dropped 32-40% depending on who you talk to and who they ship to just in the last little bit. And that is pretty hard when you loss 40% of your income.� Not only is income down, but input costs like feed and electricity remain high. You probably heard that last Friday Governor Gregoire selected State Representative Dan Newhouse, a Sunnyside Republican, as the new the Director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture. The governor wants Newhouse to focus on international market development and identify new water sources. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Northwest Ag Information Network.