Wednesday, February 6, 2019

The Outrageously High Cost of Cheap Milk

Our single can milking system for our single cow.

I am embarrassed to admit that I was in Walmart the other night, a store I abhor, (I was buying fabric for a sewing lesson my daughter graciously bought me as a Christmas present) when I noted that milk was on sale for $1 per gallon.

It chills my blood to see that. Sure, it might seem a great deal to the consumer, but it is the producer, the dairy farmer, that suffers. Walmart loves doing it because offering this milk as a "loss leader" brings in additional customers who will no doubt pick up ten other items they don't need on their way out of the store. It's no coincidence that this bargain is located at the back of the store, so many other useless items to see on your journey back there.

But when milk is offered at this cut rate price everyone suffers. The dairy farmer cannot exist on the payment they receive for their product as it is.  Currently in the US, they collect $15.30 per hundred weight of milk if they are selling conventional (non-organic) milk to a large conglomerate like Prairie Farms. That's right, they receive jut $15.30 for every hundred pounds of milk . Since there is 8.6 pounds of milk in one gallon they are therefore getting approximately $1.32 for every gallon they produce. At least this month they are. Milk prices for conventional famers fluctuate widely in the US.

In addition it is unlikely they are able to produce that gallon of milk for $1.32/gallon which is why so many farmers work off farm jobs to pay expenses or, they will increase their herd size in order to spread out expenses. But more cows means more feed, bigger barns, more equipment, more land, more insurance and increased debt. This move towards bigger farms began decades ago when Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz spewed his mantra "Get Big or Get Out".

Thus the reason so many smaller dairy farmers, those who own 200 cows or less, have run screaming from the dairy business, and why more mega dairies like Fair Oaks, have erupted with their Factory Farms. There they keep over 35,000 cows which produce nearly 300,000 gallons of milk a day. Don't let the red wood veneered barn on their web site fool you, this outfit is a full blown profit centered corporation that offers restaurant dining, gift shop cruising, and bus tours. Because you know, one can really get an accurate sense of true farming from the inside of a cushy-seated, climate-controlled bus!  

If you do take a Fair Oaks tour (only $10 for a three year old) don't expect to have the opportunity to actually pet one of these bovines.  Heaven forbid. Fair Oaks is "bio-secure" so as to protect their herd from any nasty germs visitors might bring in and furthermore, we can't have wee Sally leaving the farm with manure on her shoes can we?

All of this is to say that small family farms are rapidly disappearing from our landscape.  Over the last eighty years in the US the number of farms has decreased from more than six million in 1935 to less than two million in 2019. Meanwhile, the farm SIZE has more than doubled. Gone are the days where a drive in the country revealed sheep, pigs, cows, chickens and goats on pasture. Instead they are kept "bio-secure" in sterile metal buildings often with concrete under their feet and fluorescent lights over their heads. Their lifespans are short and they have virtually no immune systems. They are fed cheap corn, prophylactic antibiotics, and confined to inhumanely small areas. 

And every time you as consumer purchase that cheap milk you are compounding the problem.

What to do? Take a bit of time to think about your purchases. Explore the small farmers in your area who sell milk (or meat or vegetables) directly to the consumer and consider buying from them more often. If every consumer just purchased 10% of their food directly from the farm, through farm co-ops or at farmers markets, a difference could be made.

Either that or the only farm livestock you or your grandchildren will see fifty years from now will be from a helicopter tour.


20 comments:

  1. I actually read somewhere last year that the dairy buyers in this state (Maybe nationwide?) were including information on mental health measures and suicide hotline numbers with the checks they sent out to farmers. It's a huge issue: not only do you have these farmers working under the stress of trying to break even but you have farmers whose families have held into these farms for multiple generations worrying that the legacy is going to fold on their watch, through no fault of their own.
    It sucks.
    I don't know what the laws are in your state but buying directly from a farmer in PA would wither entail a 45 minute drive for us (to a licenced raw milk place) or a whole lot of wink,wink,nudge,nudge and family connections.
    Its my understanding The "local" big dairy as of last year stopped buying milk from local producers.
    I don't know what the solution is. I have thought about milk goats here but don't want to be responsible for anyone else's lactation after nursing two babies of my own.

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    1. In Illinois it is legal to sell raw milk to consumers if you are licensed and inspected to do so. Before these rules (only a few years old) we sold lots of raw milk direct to consumers, now we have one cow and no longer sell to the public. BUT there are several producers in our state, smaller farms, who have the license. We encourage folks around us to buy from them. After drinking our own milk for decades I cannot imagine drinking or cooking with the "swill" that exists in so many chain stores.

      And yes, suicide rates are up for farmers. The stress of working so hard for so many for so little is why we sold our bigger farm. Our stress levels here on The Poor Farm are dramatically lower.

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  2. I find all of this very sad. I grew up in the country spending much of my childhood on my uncle's dairy farm where he milked 50 Holstein cows. I know that's not feasible anymore. Pig farms that house a huge amount of sows require that people to wear special clothes and spray their boots are the norm around here. There are still some dairy farms. The Amish are the only ones left with 'mixed farms'. -Jenn

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    1. You summed it up. It is just plain sad. I am so happy though that all of our six gks spend regular time on our farm. So much of what we do here is in order to expose them to real farming, the kind where they get dirty and smell a bit funky when we send them home to their parents.

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  3. I've been saying for years that I'd happily pay twice the price that I do, for my milk. No-one around here milks any more, as it was costing them more to keep the cattle than the returns on their milk. Crazy.

    I've recently been watching a TV programme on YouTube called Wartime Farm. If you do ever have any spare time, I would recommend it. They had a milking machine just like yours.

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    1. I will most definitely check them out. Thanks much. we've had that can and inflation set for near 25 years and the pump we use to run it is at least 60 years old. Sound like a jet engine ( a bad jet engine) when we turn it on.

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  5. Our close friends had a dairy farm for 22 years in New York. When they started, milk was $11 per hundred weight. It dropped to $9 and spiked at around $15. It didn't stay at the high price too long. They switched to organic farming but in the end it just about wiped them out. Organic grain is outrageous. The cost is so high to feed the cows and milk them....or rather the price of milk is too low. We buy as much organic as we can and luckily there are now a lot of organic products offered. We have a well and raise some of our veggies and also have a lot of fruit trees. Patty McDonald

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    1. We too were a certified organic dairy and hay costs were very high (we didn't feed any grain) but fortunately back then we were allowed to ell direct to the consumer and set our prices accordingly. We got out when IDPH stuck there noses in and decided all raw milk dairies had to be licensed and inspected, even though there were no reports of illness related to raw milk in Illinois in decades. So now, like you, we produce as much as we can for ourselves and support local farmers for the rest.

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  6. There are almost no small dairy farms left in my area. My neighbor, who houses my Jersey, has his up for sale and he is going to sell his herd in the spring. It is heartbreaking. We have moved, as a country, so far from our roots and our food. It no longer surprises me to hear that kids are shocked that chickens have feathers and don't come in quarters, on Styrofoam, wrapped in plastic. I try to avoid Wal Mart like the plague. They are, however, the only store to carry gallon jugs of Heinz white vinegar. I make a beeline for the vinegar and get out as fast as I can. Love your milking system (and your blog)!

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    1. Even worse than the belief that chicken comes wrapped in pieces on Styrofoam, most believe chicken is automatically "nugget" sized with the chicken being a mix of ground up chicken byproducts dredged in an inch of carb-laden breading.


      And our nearest Aldi, in Pontiac Illinois, does carry gallon size vinegar. Love that store!

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  7. I would buy direct from the producer in a heartbeat but here, in the so called 'dairy' state (Wisconsin) it's totally illegal. I do buy my meat from a local producer and I too, avoid Walmart like the plague. A couple of summers ago the field I walk my dogs past was planted in corn, one day it stunk to high heaven. A few days later everything but the corn was turning yellow and shriveling up. Hmmm, that corn survived whatever killer was sprayed on it and was gonna be fed to the cattle and you expect me to eat that meat or drink that milk? Ever heard of 'you are what you eat'? It is a sad state of affairs.

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    1. Wisconsin as "the Dairy State" is a real oxymoron isn't it? When we belonged to The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund years ago, seemed they were always going to court defending the rights of Wisconsin farmers to produce and sell their own farm products. And yes, the chemical spraying is out of control. We are surrounded on three sides by conventional fields, thus the reason we keep our gardens (and bees) towards the center of our property.

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  8. There are no diaries around where we live so are forced to buy 'organic' from the store...totally sterile and lifeless, I know. Our beef comes from an organic farm 100 miles away and we buy 1/2 beef for the 2 of us. Ditto for pork. Although we have the acreage, we are both in our 80's and don't have the energy or health to raise our livestock and milk goats anymore. Nowadays we sell our organic hay and use the money to buy organic beef and pork...yeah, it sucks. Wish we were younger again. We hate Walmart, too...luckily it is over 100 miles away...they are the downfall of our farmers.

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    1. Well done you for doing your best even now in your 80's!! We all do what we can but it does feel like a losing battle sometimes. Then Spring comes and we're eating LOTS of our own veggies and all feels right in the world again :)

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  9. We heard that years ago there were several dairy farms here in Nashua, NH where we now live, but they are all gone having sadly made way for housing and shopping. When I was growing up in NJ, we used to have home delivery of milk in glass bottles which were left in an insulated box on the front porch.

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  10. This is so spot on. We currently have a dairy farm in Washington State. We have been operating this dairy farm since 1991 - 27 years this year! We haven't made a 'living' off of this farm in years. I have always worked off the farm. We are a small, family run operation. But in recent years we have been moving towards getting out of the dairy business. Huge conglomerate farms have all but forced us out, as has the ridiculously low prices, extremely high feed and operating costs. We raised all of our kids on this farm and even have a grandson now who, although still very young, has shown an interest in farming. We will not encourage him to dairy, but we also will not discourage him. We will simply give him the facts.

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  11. Oops - edit that to say it will be 28 years this June.

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  12. When Dan was still driving over-the-road he passed Fair Oaks fairly often. He would comment on how impressive the place looked, but we both agreed it was no way to farm. I'm glad you blog about this because most people don't understand the reality of milk and dairy farming.

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Comments are good, as long as you're a real person and not some goof telling me how you were cured of hepatitis by snorting a pulverized neon blue crayon. Your comments don't even have to agree with my viewpoint, I love a good discussion, but civility does matter.