Ag Groups Petition for National Milk Hearing

At a recent conference in Tunkhannock sponsored by Progressive Agriculture Organization (Pro-Ag), we announced that several farm organizations, milk cooperatives, and county commissioners have petitioned the USDA in Washington DC asking for a national milk hearing for all dairy farmers.

The petition clearly asks the Department of Agriculture to conduct milk hearings that would allow the average dairy farmer to testify and illustrate the severity of the problems that the majority of dairy farmers are experiencing.

For instance, in 2016 the average dairy farmer shipping milk to a milk handler that was regulated under one of the ten federal milk marketing orders received an average price of $15.38 per cwt. (hundredweight). At the same time, the USDA’s figures clearly illustrate that the national average cost of producing milk in 2016 was $21.87 per cwt. This means the average dairy farmer lost $6.49 per cwt. (or 60 cents per gallon) on all their milk produced in 2016.

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