U.S. Farmers Dumping 5% of Milk Output with No Place To Sell, Nor Price To Sell At

April 14, 2020 (EIRNS)—Farmers are dumping milk at unheard of rates. On any one day right now, up to 5% of U.S. output may be going down the drain, according to the estimate of the International Dairy Foods Association. Some 3.7 million gallons a day are dumped, reports the Dairy Farmers of America, a large dairymen’s marketing cooperative.

Demand for buying milk and milk products dropped 12 to 15% since the stay-at-home orders in mid-March, but no effective contingency measures have been taken so far to shore up the milk production capacity.

On April 10, the U.S. Department of Agriculture put in some measures to ease the losses to the farmer, tweaking terms to Federal dairy and insurance programs to be a little more loser-friendly.

Sending milk down the drain is not a protest, but a recourse brought about by the immediate effects on food purchases from the stay-at-home orders, coming on top of years of below-cost prices, concentration of processors for all types of dairy products, from fluid to cheese to powder, and the Wall Street/City of London domination that prevents Washington from taking remedial action.

In 2019, long before COVID-19, the U.S. lost 3,000 dairy farms to these conditions.