09/13/07 Milk Producers Part 2

Milk Producers Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Yesterday, Chris Galen with the National Milk Producers Federation talked about some of the items that they were looking for in the 2007 Farm Bill. The old bill is set to expire in just a few weeks and Galen says he doubts that the Senate will have their version done in time so he expects to see an extension. He also said the Federation was pleased with the House bill and hope that the Senate version will be along the same lines. But another issue has the milk producers worried and that is immigration. GALEN: The immigration crack down is something that a lot of dairy farmers are very concerned with and I think with good reason because it represents a law and order solution to a problem that really needs a much bigger term fix. It has to be done by Congress, it can't just be the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency going around cracking down on employers and those who have undocumented workers. Currently the government is getting ready to start enforcing the social security mismatch letter issue and Galen says AgJobs is very important. GALEN: What we really need is the passage of what's called the AgJobs bill. This is something that would make accommodations for employers of agricultural workers. And Galen says there is a lot of opposition. GALEN: To be honest of course, there is a lot of strong opposition to immigration reform; you've got a lot of people yelling "amnesty." But at the end of the day for agriculture, not just for dairy but for agriculture and meat packing and the whole food industry, if we don't have continued access to reliable workers it's not going to matter what happens to the Farm Bill, we just won't have people to milk cows, cows will go un-milked, there will be a lot of fruit rotting in the orchards and fields and a lot of consumers won't recognize the importance of this issue until all of sudden milk is 8-dollars a gallon instead of 4-dollars now. If you think prices are bad now, wait till you see what happens when all of our workforce disappears. The National Milk Producers Federation will be having a news conference next week to discuss cooperatives working together and the impact it's having on dairy producers and milk prices. That news conference will take place at 7:30am one week from today. Visit the NMPF's new website at nmpf.org for more information. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. nmpf.org