03/13/06 CWT board votes to double assessment

Mike prices are falling after two good years. That is just the thing that Cooperatives Working Together was designed to prevent. There's one problem. CWT doesn't have the money to pay for another round of herd reduction. That's why the CWT committee has decided to double the voluntary assessment says National Milk Producers Chris Galen. GALEN "Ten cents per hundredweight starting in July so that won't kick in until July first but that will allow us to bring in enough money to conduct additional herd retirement rounds or at least one more round." Now that they've taken the vote, they have to convince dairy producers to ante up another five cents per hundredweight. GALEN "What we have to do is go back out with new contracts to all the co-ops that are paying in and there are about 49 cooperatives across the country that are currently members of CWT as well as close to 400 individual farmers." Idaho producers have endorsed CWT. In fact when it was first proposed the majority voted for an 18 cent assessment but as Idaho Dairymen's executive director Bob Nearebout points out prices have tumbled since then. NEAREBOUT "It's a lot easier to give up dollars when you're being paid 14 dollars per hundredweight and give up 15 cents or tens cents per hundredweight than what it is when you're paying ten or eleven dollars per hundredweight. It's a huge volume of money to a lot of our producers." Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott