S. BURLINGTON – Making a Hail Mary pass intended to stop the freefall of milk prices, Vermont’s two U.S. senators announced Monday they have crafted a bill that would manage the milk supply and end the boom-and-bust cycle that has plagued the dairy industry for years now.
Under the hot sun at the Ethan Allen Farm, owned by John, Joyce and Todd Belter, Sens. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., unveiled The Dairy Stabilization Act, a proposal that would reward farmers who stay within their milk-production quota and financially penalize those who overproduce, thereby stabilizing the volume and the price of milk. Another co-sponsor is Sen. Patti Murray, D-Wash.
“Over the last 20 years, the dairy industry has suffered through a series of increasingly violent boom and bust cycles,” said Sanders, in introducing the other speakers. “In 2004, the price per hundredweight of milk rose to $19.30 before crashing to $11.90 in 2006.”
To a person, the speakers, including Leahy, Secretary of Agriculture Roger Allbee and a parade of Vermont dairy farmers, agreed that the peaks and valleys of the milk-pricing system must be leveled off before farmers can plan their costs and begin to achieve a modicum of profitability.
The number of farms around the country has been cut in half – from 110,000 to 65,000 – over the last decade, Leahy told the gathering of press, farmers and land-use planners. “Farmers aren’t looking for a handout or a welfare check. They want stabilization in the dairy market.”
As Sanders explained the plan, a producer board comprised of farmers from all over the country would run the program. The board would determine each year the amount of allowable growth for that year, based on figures from the same quarter in the previous year, and the price stabilization payment. Overproducers would pay a fine into a pool, administered by the board. The funds would be distributed as price stabilization payments to farmers who stayed within the guidelines.
Neither Sanders nor Leahy was prepared to suggest that this bill would sail easily through the U.S. Senate.
“This is going to be very tough,” acknowledged Sanders, “but we know that people want a closer connection to the source of their food, they want clean, healthy food. That works in our favor.”
Despite support from the Vermont Farm Bureau, Agri-Mark and many dairy co-ops, Leahy noted that Vermont will have to join forces with dairymen all over the country to make this work. “We have to work with farmers in the Midwest, the Northwest, everywhere. We cannot get this passed based just on our feelings in Vermont.”
For the most part, Agri-Mark economist Bob Wellington, watching from the sidelines, agreed with him. Wellington has written a parallel plan for Agri-Mark, which differs from the senators’ program only in that “we’re looking at some tweaks that might make it more acceptable to farmers. We’re looking at this as a business model. It’s just common sense.”
Tom Audet of Orwell said those farmers who might have resisted a supply-management scheme have changed their way of thinking. “The last two years have pushed people into a new way of thinking. If nothing else, you’ve got to have a track record of profitability before you can even think about selling.”
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