What's Up With Milk?

What’s up with Milk? I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Have you check the price of a gallon of milk at the supermarket? Or looked at cheese prices? Did you know that dairy producers are going out of business? There are a lot of questions and few answers.

GALEN: Well there’s a lot of discontent understandable so on the part of dairy farmers all around the world and one of the things in all the problems we’ve had here in the U.S. that we may lose sight of is this is a global phenomenon and dairy farmers are up in arms all over Europe, all across Europe, in other parts of the world as well and certainly all across the U.S.

That’s Chris Galen, Senior Vice President, Communications with the National Milk Producers Federation who says dairy farmers are upset over the disparity of prices.

GALEN: I think there’s nothing more aggravating than when dairy farmers go shopping and they see what consumers are still being charged for a gallon of milk or a pound of cheese and yet they know they are getting the equivalent of about a $1 or a $1.25 a gallon for their milk at the farm level and the consumer may still be paying about $3 for milk or $4 or $5 for a pound of cheddar cheese.

Someone is obviously making a profit on dairy products but it isn’t the producers and Galen says there is another factor for producers as well.

GALEN: Of coursed the other big compounding factor and aggravating factor is the cost of inputs have shot up this spring if you look at what the cash corn and soybean prices are. They’ve bumped up quite a bit and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be much relief there from higher feed grain prices and then of course oil prices have come back since this winter so we’re getting it on both sides here. The input costs have gone up and farm prices have dropped and that’s why a lot of farmers are upset.

Many producers all over the world have been forced to sell off herds and some have even dumped milk as a way of protest.

GALEN: It’s a protest and the do that kind of thing in Europe. They’ve been doing it recently in Germany and France and some of the other European countries but it’s not like the Ag Secretary or the Chairmen of the Ag Committees in the House and Senate aren’t aware of the problem, they’re fully aware. And the question is do consumers really care? Well what are consumers going to do? Hopefully they will continue to buy dairy products but I’m not sure that other than a one day awareness generating activity it’s really going to have any impact on the marketplace.

Tomorrow we’ll talk with Chris Galen about some of the ways they are trying to help regain the dairy market.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.