National Milk Producers Federation Submits Proposal to Update Federal Milk Marketing Order System

The National Milk Producers Federation has submitted its version of specific concepts to modernize and reform. The Federal Milk Marketing Order System. Senior Vice President of Member Services and Strategic Initiatives for the National Milk Producers Federation, Chris Galen says there are two main areas that they would like reformed, the first of which is make order allowances.

“This is a way that determines farmers' milk prices by backing out the cost of turning their raw milk into manufactured products like cheese and butter. And so those have not really changed in a couple of decades. Obviously, the cost of making those products has changed a lot in the past couple of decades Lorrie, so processors who manufacture these dairy products generally would like to see higher make allowances which raises the amount of money they get to keep when they are again turning farmers milk into finished goods.”

The other big change that National Milk is proposing is to class one milk pricing or milk that is bottled they would like to return to the higher of the class 1 mover.

“(It) as a change that was made in a 2018 farm bill that ended up costing dairy farmers money primarily during the pandemic as a result of all the volatility we saw there, but it hasn't been a good deal for farmers. So we would like to go back to the class 1 lever that we had prior to 2018

as well as updating overall class one prices across the country.”

According to Galen, the next step in the reform process is USDA holding a national federal order hearing, which is expected to take place later this summer.