Dear Editor,

Dairy farmers across the nation are once again left without effective farm bill legislation. Another year of hard work by dairy farm groups to develop and promote their policy ideas has been ignored by Congress.

There can be no excuse for the way Congress is treating our nation’s dairy farmers. I wonder how much longer dairy farmers will put their trust in Washington to address their pricing problems.

We seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place. We have a do-nothing Congress on one hand and giant foreign-owned processors on the other. The good news is that we don’t need to depend on either one as much as we have in the past. Dairy farmers acting together in the market can gain the prices they need to cover their costs and make a reasonable profit.

Dairy farmers own the milk first. This is their biggest advantage in the marketplace. Now, more than ever, all dairy farmers must use their legal rights to work together and fairly price milk at the farm level.

Has Congress failed the dairy farmer once again?

Dear Editor,

Certainly Congress has the American dairy farmer in their crosshairs - or maybe in shackles. It’s time that Congress pulls the trigger and does something realistic for the dairy farmers; and we don’t mean any fiscal handouts for the dairymen.

The passage of the Goodlatte-Scott Amendment in the House prevents the undesirable supply management part of the Dairy Security Act from being in the proposed House version of the farm bill.

However, the Goodlatte-Scott Amendment in our opinion will not do anything to raise much needed prices to dairy farmers.

The only way prices can be raised and stabilized to dairy farmers is by Congress passing a new pricing formula that is based on the dairy farmers’ cost of production, as contained in the Federal Milk Marketing Improvement Act. Pro-Ag and all the 30 some organizations that belong to the National Family Farm Coalition strongly supports this new pricing formula. However, we also strongly support the need of a standby supply management program which would only be implemented if milk production exceeds domestic needs. This standby provision (to be used only when needed) would be paid for by dairy farmers and not US taxpayers.

I really don’t see why this is so hard to understand! Also some of the unneeded imports of dairy products would also have to be curtailed. Some other farm organizations across the United States, like the National Dairy Producers Organization, strongly support the need to pull dairy products from the market place if there is too much milk being produced. We still will have to deal with unneeded imports of dairy products.

The farm bill is misnamed and out of control. Who ever thought the cost of the Farm Bill would reach a Trillion dollars? The people who are supposed to know claim that the various agriculture programs represent only 20% of the Farm Bill. The various Food Assistance Programs make up the other 80%. This is unbelievable. Many people propose that the Food Assistance Programs (which are strongly supported by many members of Congress) be taken out of the Farm Bill. However, if this is done would there be enough votes in Congress for the true farm bill?

One thing is certain, if we could implement a standby milk supply management program coupled with a realistic new pricing formula, we could save the USDA one billion dollars, but even more important, we could start to revitalize many sections of rural America.

We strongly urge the United States Congress to get dairy farmers out of their crosshairs and pass sensible dairy legislation for the good of all America. We urge all members of Congress to give our suggestions strong consideration.