State's milk production up again; new Farm Bureau leader

Washington Ag Today November 23, 2011 The latest USDA report on milk production shows output in Washington was up 5.7 percent in October compared to October of 2010. That follows a 5.1 percent rise in September compared to a year earlier.

Washington’s dairies added one-thousand more cows to the herd from September to October. Last month’s cow inventory at 266-thousand ahead was twelve thousand more than last year and output per cow was up 15 pounds from October of 2010.

Meanwhile, U.S. fluid milk consumption is on a downtrend but prices remain high. Ricky Volpe, USDA economist, explains why retail milk prices are running higher than this time last year.

Volpe: “Fluid milk prices right now are high for a couple of reasons. One is that fuel prices in 2011 have been driving fluid milk prices because fuel hits milk at processing and at transportation. So it is kind of a double-whammy as far as fluid milk prices go. And also we have been exporting large quantities of dry milk, powdered milk, specifically to southeast Asia but also to a lot of international markets due to the relative weak U.S. dollar. So those factors have combined for high fluid milk prices in 2011 and that‘s also the outlook for 2012.”

Voting delegates at the Washington Farm Bureau’s annual meeting last week elected Mike LaPlant, a hay farmer from Grant County, to the position of President. Steve Appel of Whitman County, who had served as Washington Farm Bureau President for 17 consecutive years, announced his retirement this year.

I’m Bob Hoff. That’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.

?