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Dairy cooperative wants timely payment language in farm bill

A dairy farmer cooperative would like to have a requirement for timely milk payments inserted into the farm bill.

Tim Trotter with Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative tells Brownfield under the Federal Milk Marketing Orders, processors are required to pay farmers for their milk at least twice a month.  He says farmers face the risk of not getting paid. “The risk we have right now, especially in the upper Midwest, is there’s an increasingly amount of milk that is not covered or is not covered by the FMMO (Federal Milk Marketing Order) because that milk is depooled. Technically, that processor would not have to pay twice a month.”

Trotter says the processors have always paid timely in the past, but says if you don’t have that requirement in the law, there’s no guarantee payments will keep coming twice a month, and about 30% percent of the nation’s milk is outside of the marketing pool, and farmers in Federal Order #30 account for most of that 30%.

Federal Order #30 covers nearly all of Minnesota and Wisconsin, northern Iowa, northern Illinois, and parts of eastern North and South Dakota.  Trotter says most of the farmers at risk because their milk is depooled operate in this area. 

Trotter says timely payment isn’t the only thing that needs to be codified in the farm bill. “And the other part of that is the verification services that are, right now, also required by federal orders, that there’s a third party that will evaluate and make sure that the equipment that’s testing the farm’s milk on those daily shipments that those tests are accurate.”

He says many farms rely heavily on component testing for accurate milk checks, and that also needs to be in the farm bill to protect depooled milk.

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