Dairy Operators Seek Own Supply Controls

Posted by Brian Gould Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:48:00 GMT

Question: What do you do if you are a dairy producer, you have to ship your milk to a supplier and the supplier dictates the price?

The answer, according to leaders of a dairy advocacy group who spoke to a room full of dairy farmers in Tulare Wednesday, is to band together to control how much milk you produce.

The problem is there are 60,000 dairy farmers in the U.S. who have to agree - not to mention the approximately 150 dairies in Kings County, large and small, that produce hundreds of millions of dollars of milk a year.

The subject of Wednesday’s well-attended meeting was a bill recently introduced by Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, that would provide incentives for producers to control their production. The bill comes a year after one of the worst downturns in the history of the state’s dairy industry, with prices collapsing to unsustainable levels and staying there for months.  For the full story click here.