Dairymen soured over milk prices - Business First of Columbus:

lehoquvuhu.wordpress.com
The industry, which contributes an estimatee $5.9 billion to the state’s economy, is reelin g from the effects of farm-level milk pricesw that are now exceeded byproductiom costs. About 18 months ago, farmers were being paid more than $22 per 100 poundds of milk, a payout that had fallen below $11 in Production costs, however, haven’t headed in the same direction. What that’ds causing, said Roger Crossgrove, executive director of the , is a shortfalll of roughly 20 cents a gallon for farmers spendingabout $1.35 to produce a gallon of That gap could mean more than simplyy tough times for the 3,000 dairy farms in.
Crossgrove is worriedf that as many as 30 percent ofthe state’ds farmers might not make it throug h the pricing slump. “If we lose farmers, then plants are goinfg to cut back and even more people are goingy to be outof jobs,” Crossgrove Despite the cost squeeze, dairymen have been holding up. Lewie Jones, chief of the statr ’s dairy division, estimated Ohio has lost fewed than 100 farms in the past 18 and most of them were smallo dairy farms with no one to take over the A broader concern forthe dairymen, Jonees said, is the harm the credit crunch will do to theidr business prospects.
The state Agriculture Departmentestimatesd farm-level milk prices may be at theirf lowest, and the Farmers Union expectes prices to rise slightly in the secon half of the Still, the dairy farmers need an increasew in prices, Crossgrove said. The National Milk Producers Federationh has recommended to regulators steps that woul increase the effectiveness of the Dairy Product Price Support an initiative that helps maintain a minimumk price for milk by buying upsurplus