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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Consumers asked to help New England farmers
  • Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:25:06 -0600


Consumers asked to help New England farmers
By DAVE GRAM
http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_13340433

RICHMOND -- Three New England states are urging consumers to chip in and help
save the region’s dairy farms, which are struggling with record-low prices
being paid for their milk.

Agriculture officials and farmers from Vermont, New Hampshire and
Massachusetts gathered Monday at a dairy farm in Richmond to launch the Keep
Local Farms program.

Organizers have set up a Web site -- at http://www.keeplocalfarms.org -- for
people to make contributions, which will be divided among farmers.

Under the program, they’re urging universities and other institutions to
charge a little extra for dairy products in their cafeterias, with the
proceeds going to farmers. The University of Vermont is the first to sign on.

And organizers hope within the next year to launch a co-branding effort that
would put labels on dairy products and ask consumers to pay premiums for
milk, cheese and other dairy goods, with the proceeds going to struggling
dairy farmers.

The aim of the program is to help stop a trend in which New England has lost
two-thirds of its dairy farms, down to about 1,880, since 1990. Many farmers
say they have left because a highly complex federal pricing system has failed
to keep pace with costs.

The pricing system, which dates from the 1930s, sets a national floor price
that farmers are paid for their milk, then tweaks it to respond to supply and
demand in the market and different costs faced by farmers in different
regions.

Critics
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say it does not do enough to account for higher costs for farmers in the
Northeast, who face long supply lines for feed and fuel, cold winters and a
shorter feed-growing season than other parts of the country.

Speakers at Monday’s event pointed to a sad irony in which consumer demand
for local produce is taking off when the largest part of New England
agriculture is withering.

Farmers are getting about $11.40 per hundred pounds of milk, down from $18.72
last year, officials said, attributing much of the change to declining
exports amid the global recession. Put another way, farmers are getting 97
cents for a gallon of milk that costs $1.80 on average to produce. Some
stores price milk at $5 or more per gallon.

Even farmers who sell out are struggling to pay off their debts, said Rob
Wheeler, who with his family milks about 60 Jersey cows and taps maple trees
for syrup on his 360-acre farm in Wilmington, a small picturesque town ringed
by mountainous countryside in the southern part of the state.

"Even the most financially sound dairy operations are in a tough situation,"
Wheeler said. "It’s not a pretty picture for a life’s work."

Officials said they hope to appeal to consumers’ growing taste for local
foods, pitching dairy products from anywhere in the six-state New England
region as local to consumers within it. They also hope to appeal to
residents’ love for New England’s scenery, pointing to farmers’ role in
keeping land undeveloped and vistas open.

"It would mean a real change to our landscape in New Hampshire and all of New
England if we were to lose a significant part of our dairy industry," said
Lorraine Stuart Merrill, New Hampshire’s agriculture commissioner and a dairy
farmer.

The commissioner of the Department of Agricultural Resources in
Massachusetts, Scott Soares, said the most critical part of the dairy aid
plan launched Monday -- meaning the most lucrative to farmers -- is likely to
be the co-branding effort because it will put the issue of dairy pricing
directly before supermarket shoppers.

"It’s a response to what we have heard from consumers wanting to pay more for
milk if they have the opportunity and the assurance that that additional fee
is going to go to the dairy farms directly," Soares said of the co-branding
program.

But Vermont’s director of dairy policy, Diane Bothfeld, said it would take
some time to get any of the major brands of milk on board.

"It’s a big step for someone to change their logo, to reach out and start
co-branding with a program that’s brand new," Bothfeld said.

She said it’s hoped that in the coming months the program will gain "more
credibility, more momentum, to be able to convince processors to co-brand
their product."

But even if the program works as well as anyone hopes, it’s not the long-term
solution for the troubles facing dairy farmers in New England and nationally,
said Roger Allbee, Vermont’s secretary of agriculture.

"Obviously there needs to be a change in federal dairy policy, because it’s
broken, it’s antiquated and it needs a fix," he said.

In July, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would temporarily
raise the price paid for milk and cheddar cheese through its dairy price
support program.





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