Friday, October 16, 2009
Struggling Dairy Farms Counting on Federal Aid
Struggling dairy farms counting on federal aid
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 3:07 AM
By Tracy Turner
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Struggling Ohio dairy farmers are hopeful that a bill passed last week by the U.S. Senate will help more of them stay afloat after more than a year of low milk prices.
The $350 million in emergency funding is part of a $121 billion agriculture spending bill for the 2010 budget year. The bill includes $290 million in direct payments to farmers. It now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.
The measure also includes $60 million for the government to buy cheese and other dairy products for food banks and other nutrition programs.
The aid gives hope to strapped farmers, said Bonnie Ayars, who operates Land of Living Farm, a 1,000-acre, 150-cow dairy farm in Mechanicsburg.
"When you take into account the costs associated with the animal's health issues, the cost of feed, farm employment, and add to that a struggling economy, it's become too difficult for farmers to survive," she said.
A typical farmer who's milking 100 cows is losing up to $10,000 a month, Ayars said.
"You can only pull your belt so many notches," she said. "So many dairy farmers have gone under because they can't survive.
"It's not mismanagement -- it's the economy. Farmers don't want a free handout, but there needs to be some respect for agriculture and dairy farming."
In the past year, milk prices dropped below $10 per hundredweight, or 100 pounds, a standard measure used on dairy farms.
Dairy farmers were getting, on average, $11.47 per hundredweight of milk in August, according to the Ohio Dairy Producers Association.
That's a substantial decline from a year ago, when the price rose to $20 per hundredweight, said Dan Young, a third-generation operator of Young's Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs. The price had ranged from $14 to $17 per 100 pounds in previous years.
"Farmers are making less than $1 a gallon, which is not sustainable," he said. "The price of corn to feed the cows, land, capital input and labor haven't dropped by half, if at all.
"The lower milk prices are good for consumers, but very bad for farmers. No farmer is able to continue to survive on $10 per 100 pounds. A number of farms have gone out of business as a result."
Ohio's 3,329 dairy farms produced 5.11 billion pounds of milk last year, said Jenny Hubble, spokeswoman for the Ohio Dairy Producers Association.
The federal aid is important to dairy farmers, said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Hunger, Nutrition and Family Farms.
"The dairy sector plays a key role in the economic vitality and success of Ohio's small towns and rural communities," he said in a statement. "It's imperative Ohio dairy farmers have the support they need to withstand this time of high production costs and plummeting farm-level prices."
It is unclear what the average payment would be or how the funds would be distributed, said Meghan Dubyak, Brown's spokeswoman.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
