Windmill Farm Dairy: Call To Action!

Help Save America’s Dairy Farmers!

Milk prices collapse to 1970 levels! Farmers Facing Great Depression Crisis!

America

’s remaining 59,000 dairy farmers are facing an unprecedented economic crisis. Tens of thousands of independent producers are at risk of losing their livelihoods if this crisis remains ignored, while consumers across the country risk having no local sources of fresh dairy products. Rural landscapes will be threatened as more dairy farms exit the industry. Already reports of farm suicides are on the rise.

BACKGROUND: Since 1980, as a result of President Reagan deregulating the price of milk, we have lost over 80% of our dairy farmers. Dairy farmers have faced a volatile roller-coaster in milk pricing, causing entire regions of the country to now lack local fresh dairy products while factory dairy farms proliferate in Texas and New Mexico, shipping their milk thousands of miles away.

CURRENT SITUATION: Milk prices have now dropped below 1970s level, not even accounting for inflation! Can most of us imagine living off the salary we made in 1970 without factoring increased costs of living? Farmers are receiving less than $12.00 for a hundredweight of milk that costs $18-30 to produce! Meanwhile, profits for Dean Foods, the largest fluid milk corporation and Kraft Foods have skyrocketed. Organic dairy farmers have not been spared either from this crisis as many have lost their contracts or seen their prices slashed as well.

WHAT’S BEHIND THE CRISIS: While some voices claim a lack of demand for dairy products and oversupply of milk is behind the price collapse, dairy farmers blame a corrupt pricing system easily manipulated by corporations and a flood of imported milk protein concentrates (MPCs) displacing U.S. farmers milk. Food companies are continually pressing the FDA to allow MPCs to be labeled as real “milk” in cheese, ice cream and other dairy products! The U.S. has actually been a dairy-deficit nation the past 10 years and not producing enough to meet our needs here.

The dairy industry has undergone enormous corporate consolidation so that dairy cooperatives such as Dairy Farmers of America and Land ‘OLakes no longer represent their farmer-members and are aligned instead with Dean Foods and Kraft. Independent dairy farmers no longer have any choice about where to sell their milk. The Department of Justice in 2005 launched an investigation looking into antitrust, anti-competive abuses in the dairy industry. Political pressure in the Bush Administration meant the findings were never made public.