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Marin Bozic, a University of Minnesota dairy economist, holds a glass representing Class I, or fluid, milk. In the Federal Milk Marketing Orders, high-value fluid milk is generally used to subsidize pay to farmers in the other three milk classes, represented by the other three glasses. But as fluid milk consumption declines, there s less milk to pour into the other cups, causing problems for the producer price differential.
Screenshot by Philip Gruber
Dairy farmers to seek emergency USDA hearing on Class I mover reform
Special to the Empire-Tribune
The National Milk Producers Foundation’s Board of Directors voted recently to request an emergency USDA hearing on a Federal Milk Marketing Order proposal to restore fairness for farmers in the Class I fluid milk price mover, according to a news release from the website dairynews.com
The endorsement of the board, which represents dairy farmers and cooperatives nationwide, followed approval April 16 from the organization’s Executive Committee.
The NMPF plan would ensure that farmers recover lost revenue and establish more equitable distribution of risk among dairy farmers and processors. The current mover, adopted in the 2018 farm bill, was intended to be revenue neutral while facilitating increased price risk management by fluid milk bottlers. But the new Class I mover contributed to disorderly marketing conditions last year during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and cost da
Today a sty for stately suburbs, Sussex County was once a bastion for swine.
Roughly 30,000 pigs – four for every three people – lived in the county in 1850, U.S. Census records show. Sussex County farmers that year claimed to have shepherded 8,300 sheep, harvested 21,000 pounds of beeswax and produced 1.8 million pounds of butter on 245,000 acres of farmland.
While milk cows and the grain to feed them once reigned supreme, Sussex County is now home to a wide variety of farming from llamas and rabbits to sweet potatoes and sunflower seeds. The total farmed acres nonetheless total less than 60,000. The hogs number fewer than 550.
Average feed costs are up more than $5.00 per hundredweight
U.S. dairy farmers are feeling the squeeze.
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Average feed costs are up more than $5.00 per hundredweight
U.S. dairy farmers are feeling the squeeze.
Check out this story on FarmersAdvance.com: https://www.farmersadvance.com/story/news/2021/05/12/average-feed-costs-up-more-than-5-00-per-hundredweight/4977088001/
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Converging circumstances weigh down PPDs
In the 19 years prior to 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, the monthly difference between Class III and Class IV prices had exceeded $5 per hundredweight (cwt.) on only six occasions. In 2020, that difference occurred six more times. For deeper perspective . . . that was just six times in 228 months prepandemic and six times in the first 12 pandemic months.
“In two of those months, the spread was greater than $10, and in three more of those months, it was greater than $7 per cwt.,” Cornell’s Chris Wolf shared during the May 5
These wide differences in Class III and Class IV prices have framed the discussion surrounding negative Producer Price Differentials (PPDs) in 2020 and have contributed a great deal of fodder to the discussion of Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) change.