Correspondent
CHILTON
Members of the Calumet County National Farmers Organization (NFO) chapter are alarmed not only with the depressed prices for milk and livestock but also with what they see as an ineffective response by the agricultural group leaders, including those in the NFO. This was the main topic of discussion at the chapter’s June monthly meeting.
“I am ashamed of the leaders of all the farm organizations,” county member and national NFO director Don Mielke of Sherwood told his fellow members. “They’ve issued press releases but that’s about it.”
“Dairy farmers are being treated like second class citizens and no leaders are doing anything about it,” Mielke stated. “There’s no chance for any of us to make a profit at what the milk futures prices are for the next two years.”
The farm management service accountant who handles his tax paperwork recently commented that he does not have any dairy farmer client who is going to be paying estimated taxes this year because not one of them will have any operating profits on which to pay taxes, Mielke reported. This means that virtually none of the approximately 60,000 remaining dairy farmers will be paying any state or federal income taxes this year, he observed.
Mielke mentioned a recent price protest rally in Iowa which drew about 150 persons. Given the market prices of the past six months and the prospects for many months ahead, he and county member John Nadler agreed the crowd should have been 10 to 100 times that size (1,500 to 15,000) instead.
That rally attracted coverage by two local television stations but not by any of the many national broadcast or cable networks, Mielke noted. Given their lack of attention to the topic, he and other county members agreed that the local and regional newspapers apparently also do not know or care about the economic squeeze affecting the farmers in their circulation areas.
“We need a “Save America’ rally,” Mielke said. He suggested that trying to save dairy farmers from economic ruin should not be handled through the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) payments (currently accounting for about 15 percent of what dairy farmers who have not yet hit the federal fiscal year cap of 2.985 million pounds are receiving for the milk they ship) but rather through higher payments on the part of milk buyers in the private market.
Mielke suggested that MILC is tool lobbied for by the major dairy processors to reduce what they pay for milk and to compensate dairy farmers somewhat from the federal treasury instead. One of them, Kraft Foods, recently reported a 59 percent jump in profits for its latest operating quarter, he pointed out.
Although he once heralded his appointment to Cong. Steve Kagen’s (D – Appleton) agricultural advisory team, Mielke now rescinds that acclamation. He is frustrated in not getting responses to phone calls to Kagen’s office, said Kagen’s stance is that agricultural issues have been settled with the passage of the 2008 Farm Bill and assailed the failure by Kagen, who is a member of the House agriculture committee, to endorse the Specter-Casey Act. This act would substantially raise milk prices because they would be based on the cost of production (variously estimate at $16 to $18 per hundred or more today).
Quoting a statement by national Holstein Association president Doug Maddox, who also has a 7,000-cow operation in California, Mielke said the time has also come for dairy farmers “to produce for the market, not to try to market all that they produce.” Noting how, during his international travels, he has learned first hand about the benefits of supply management for dairy farmers in Italy, Mielke said he is very disappointed that dairy cooperatives and the processor organizations have not been supporting the Holstein Association’s call for a voluntary cutback in milk production.
Although it is directed to reducing milk production and eventually boosting milk prices, the Cooperatives Working Together dairy herd retirement program is the wrong approach, Mielke argued. It is having the effect instead of “getting rid of farmers, not of cows,” he said.
“These milk prices will lead to the loss of a whole generation of young farmers,” Mielke warned. “The new topic that I’m hearing about is whether animal agriculture in jeopardy,” Nadler added.
What had been a somewhat promising outlook for grain prices for the remainder of 2009 suddenly took a wrong turn, Nadler stated. “I’m at a loss for words on what happened on Friday (June 12).”
Despite reports of high concentrations of vomitoxin in the winter wheat being harvested in southern areas, there is virtually no movement in the wheat market, Nadler indicated. He surmised that the drop in futures prices for both soybeans and corn was due to verification of the cutback in the numbers of livestock and poultry on feed. Nadler quoted the day’s local cash market prices as $10 per bushel for soybeans, $4.06 for new crop wheat and $3.66 for corn.
“The hog situation is very sad,” Nadler continued. He said one indication of this is the announced production cutback by Smithfield Foods, which is a major player in the hog sector production and processing.
County chapter president Don Huebner of Forest Junction reported a continuing drop in cattle prices at the Green Bay livestock markets. He cited a mid-June range of 83 to 93 cents per dressed weight pound, depending on quality, for slaughter dairy cows and grade prices of $1.31, and $1.21, and $1.11 per dressed weight pound for Holstein steers. He suggested that the steer prices have “gone down like crazy” because of an increase in the cull cow volume.
The “how bad does it have to get, it can’t get much worse, nobody is doing anything about it” sentiment of the meeting carried over to the local chapter’s activities. Because of the poor turnout last year, the members decided not to have a picnic meeting that they had held for many years at a host farm during July.
Ideas were shared instead about trying a multiple-county event at the Ledgeview livestock facility near Green Bay. Given the limited turnout at recent district and regional meetings, the Calumet County members weren’t extremely confident about turning the tide on that point but they believed it is worth a try.
