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From The Christian Science Monitor
Slumping milk prices force dairy farmers to think outside the barn
Twelve years ago, Terry Edge, in his mid 20s and descended from Wisconsin dairy farmers, turned his back on the family business and took a job in construction. It didn’t last long. Six months later he bought 50 cows, moved them into his grandfather’s old barn, and threw himself into the subtleties of cow breeding, determined not just to follow the old dairying life but to improve on it, raising animals that were healthier and better suited to grazing on the lush green hillsides of southwest Wisconsin.
“I went that route thinking it would help me make ends meet,” he says. “But it didn’t work out that way.”
Now Mr. Edge has come to the end of the line. He sold most of his cows at an auction last month, undone by a stretch of low milk prices that has lasted 3-1/2 years and imperiled dairy farmers across the country.
Some like Edge are being forced out of the dairy business. For others, the hard times are focusing new attention on strategies that go beyond just milking cows in big barns, such as making cheeses or switching to goats or sheep. And some farmers, pointing to a quota system of production in Canada that keeps milk prices more stable there, say new policies might be the answer.
COMMENT:-
I wonder what the US will do about Canada's "unfair trade practice" of having a quota system for milk production if the American dairy farmers start lobbying for the same sort of a system in the US because that sort of a system will "protect Americans".
It would make it rather difficult for the US government to complain about the Canadian system if the US adopts a similar one, wouldn't it?
Slumping milk prices force dairy farmers to think outside the barn
Twelve years ago, Terry Edge, in his mid 20s and descended from Wisconsin dairy farmers, turned his back on the family business and took a job in construction. It didn’t last long. Six months later he bought 50 cows, moved them into his grandfather’s old barn, and threw himself into the subtleties of cow breeding, determined not just to follow the old dairying life but to improve on it, raising animals that were healthier and better suited to grazing on the lush green hillsides of southwest Wisconsin.
“I went that route thinking it would help me make ends meet,” he says. “But it didn’t work out that way.”
Now Mr. Edge has come to the end of the line. He sold most of his cows at an auction last month, undone by a stretch of low milk prices that has lasted 3-1/2 years and imperiled dairy farmers across the country.
Some like Edge are being forced out of the dairy business. For others, the hard times are focusing new attention on strategies that go beyond just milking cows in big barns, such as making cheeses or switching to goats or sheep. And some farmers, pointing to a quota system of production in Canada that keeps milk prices more stable there, say new policies might be the answer.
COMMENT:-
I wonder what the US will do about Canada's "unfair trade practice" of having a quota system for milk production if the American dairy farmers start lobbying for the same sort of a system in the US because that sort of a system will "protect Americans".
It would make it rather difficult for the US government to complain about the Canadian system if the US adopts a similar one, wouldn't it?