State's Dairy Farmers Say They Need Help

1246 sound of fence ..(this is the freestyle operation where the cows are housed during the day)

Bob Drown Junior milks 110 cows on Great Ash Farm in Webster.
Every 48 hours, the family-run farm produces about 1300 gallons of milk.
(moo)
Drown had hoped to have his son take over the farm when he retires, but now he doubts that will happen.
1247 :37 with milk prices the way they are and with what he can make in the industry away from the farm, get health benefits and things like that, we can’t provide those things.

In 2005, Drown got a dollar 40 for each gallon. Last year he got only 85 cents.
(nat sound grain)

A machine on his farm spits out a grain mixture for the cows’ feed.
Drown says in addition to low milk prices, grain prices have almost doubled for him – he pays 14-thousand dollars a month.
“I’m hearing that grain could increase another 100 dollars a ton by July and if that’s true, there’s going to be a lot of guys out there that are milking 60 to 70 cows that are going to go by the wayside because they can’t pay their insurances they can’t pay their tax bills and those guys are just going to get sick of it and get sick of banging their heads against the walls and call it quits.”

1203(I don’t think its too harsh to say our dairy farmers are in a crisis)

Deb Erb is a dairy farmer in Landaff, New Hampshire.
She and dozens of other farmers recently told house agriculture committee members that they need help.
“New Hampshire dairy farmers did not cause this and NH dairy farmers cannot fix this, our price is set nationally, and when you have just a small percentage too much milk, USDA sets the price and it goes down like it did last year.”

The price dropped so much last year that North Haverhill farmer David Keith lost 200 thousand dollars.
1196 :53 this last year, and this is the hard part for me, I had to borrow against my equity that should be my retirement to keep the farm afloat, which I don’t ever see getting back, because when you have milk prices as low as we were, this doesn’t get over with when milk prices go back up, it takes four or five years to get over one as bad as this year.”

Legislators are considering several bills designed to help farmers.
Representative Michael Rollo of Rollinsford is sponsoring a bill that would create a three million dollar emergency milk relief fund through a two and a half cent tax on milk distributors.
When the price of milk falls below a certain level, the money would go to farmers.
Rollo urged other legislators to support it or risk losing thousand of acres of open space if dairy farms are forced out of business.
“1206 2:50 land that used to have cows wandering across pastures are now subdivision, there’s nothing wrong with that but if folks are truly concerned about the NH advantage, then I think you should be concerned about it, it’s not just tax policy it’s our entire way of life.”

Vermont, Maine and Connecticut already help their dairy farmers using similar relief funds.
Another approach would make sure that dairy farmers get paid at least half the retail price of milk.
Large Animal Veterinarian Doctor Mark Anderson told legislators that distributors and retailers are making money at the farmer’s expense.
The distribution market is very concentrated and only the farmers are subject to federal price controls.
1199 50 cents per gallon of milk is what these farmers are underpaid and what they have been underpaid historically. I’ve had a running joke with my dairy farmers this year I go into their barns and I start looking for cameras, I think their must be some nationwide reality show about to go on T-V about watch how we starve dairy farmers, watch what they’ll do to survive as we starve them further and further.”

Dairy farmers complain that, beyond the power of the distributors, the root of their problem is the federally controlled milk market.
The price of milk is set by a complicated formula that works off the value of cheese and butter on the Chicago mercantile exchange.
State Agricultural Commissioner Steve Taylor says it’s a volatile market and the formula for setting the price of milk needs a radical overhaul.
“We need to get away from that Chicago mercantile exchange where trading is very thin and it isn’t very reflective of a real market, we need a balanced system that pays farmers a reasonable price and assures the consumer a reasonable price on the other end.”

But Taylor says that change can only happen through federal legislation, not state.
I just want to caution everybody that the fix has got to be done at the national level, it’s got to be done in the 2007 farm bill otherwise in a year or two we’ll be right back in the same situation. The pattern for the last has been boom and bust and it’s the bust that cause a great deal and disruption to our dairy farmer.

Several years ago, a Northeast Dairy Compact Commission existed which allowed six New England states to set prices for milk in the region.
Taylor says the program worked well and gave money back to dairy farmers.
But Congress never reauthorized the Commission after 2001.
3:12 the unfortunate part was other parts of the country were very jealous and what they did was torpedoed the thing when it came up for renewal.

Some farmers think the Commission should be re-established.
But to do that, all of the Northeastern states would have to agree to it.
That may take a lot of political will and time.
Until then, New Hampshire dairy farmers are hoping the state can help out.
Lawmakers will likely combine parts of all three dairy bills into final legislation during work sessions in the next few weeks.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.