Dairy farmers make case to Vilsack
WEST SALEM, Wis. — Tomorrow isn’t soon enough.
Dairy farmers can’t wait for a government process to work its way through the system, they need Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to raise the price they receive for the milk they sell now.
The price paid to conventional dairy farmers has dropped from near $20 per hundredweight last year to around $11 per hundredweight this year. A hundredweight is equal to 11.63 gallons of milk.
For organic dairy producers, the story is much the same, with prices falling from close to $30 per hundredweight in March and April to $12.50 earlier this month.
Both organic and conventional dairy producers are losing money every day, dairy farmers told Vilsack Thursday during a stop in West Salem.
June is Dairy Month
June is dairy month and I would like to take time to salute those who get up before the crack of dawn and have to be there 7 days a week to milk those cows.
I have to admit I have only milked a cow once or twice in my life, even though I grew up on a farm. We, like many people back in the 1960s and before that, had one old Jersey cow on the farm that we milked by hand to supply our own needs. Jerseys were nice because they were smaller in body weight and didn’t eat as much as some breeds. Also, they gave less milk which was more than the cats and us could consume anyway. Best of all, they had high butterfat content which was great for cream, butter and such.
About the time I started to grade school, we got rid of the cow and started buying milk at our neighbor’s, the Campbells. They had whole bottled milk, you could see the cream right on top. It was fun to go over there and buy it right from the dairy. That was nearly 50 years ago when we started buying milk there and I am glad to say that dairy is still in business. Carrol is in the business these days. When I was a kid, it was his dad, Harold.
