Dino Giacomazzi

By Dino Giacomazzi, Giacomazzi Dairy, Hanford, CA

“Producers Voice” written for and printed in Agribusiness Dairyman Magazine, July 2010

Not exactly what Mark Twain had in mind when penning the famous quote but it pretty much sums up the dairy industry today.

The dairy industry is a unique critter. We are a group of fiercely independent, conservative capitalists doing everything we can to wrangle ourselves into socialist systems. Milk marketing orders and cooperatives are examples of such systems that developed out of need.

We aren’t very consistent in our politics. We generally display a, “get the government out of my back pocket, but they damn well better make a deposit in my front pocket” attitude. I am actually ok with these forms of schizophrenia. The problem I have is the hypocrisy of the fighting within the industry.

It appears to me that the dairy industry is at war. We are at war with radical environmentalists who want to regulate cow farts and let sardines rule the earth. At war with vegan terrorists who torture animals on video to portray us as Hitler with a milk mustache. At war with Marxist journalists who portray modern agriculture as the source of all societal ills, creating a dilemma for us omnivores. At war with unions, regulators, politicians, inspectors, monopolistic processors, oligarchic retailers, weather reporters, food burning cars, market manipulators, protein concentrators, hippies, lions, tigers, bears, and Al Gore! Oh my!

Why the heck are we constantly at war with each other? Why is it every time we show up to a battle with an outside group we come fighting with each other? We do this with processors over make allowances and environmentalists over air regulations. They show up organized, with a plan, and a message. We show up prepared to lose. I don’t blame policymakers for making the easy choice.

With all this adversity it seems like this would be a good time to come together. Let’s cease to be Western, Midwestern or Northeastern dairymen, lets not align ourselves as dairymen from ABC or XYZ co-op, let’s erase the lines between the dairymen of the red trade group and the blue one. Let’s just be Dairymen!
Ok, great, we are all just dairymen, now what? How about we talk about Milk Market Management.

In 2009 we didn’t have a supply problem we had a demand problem. Yes the price discovery system is flawed and the markets are manipulated, but that doesn’t change the fact that the economies of the world collapsed. They are still collapsing. It wasn’t just us. Like the post-911 years 2002-2003, the world melted down and we melted with it.

We need a unified dairy industry taking a holistic approach to reform doing it from a position of thoughtful reflection as opposed to panicked reaction. And we need to do it now.

The first step is to stop talking about supply management and start talking about milk market management, a comprehensive plan to reform all sectors of the industry. Reform must take place on the supply side and the demand side. Supply management is just one spoke in the wheel that will drive our industry into a brighter future.

The demand side must include a coordinated effort by every dairy marketing organization across the country to produce two simultaneous campaigns. One positioning dairy products as the healthy, natural choice over sodas and junk food. The other, a public relations campaign demonstrating that dairy families share the same values as the people voting on milk with their check book and at the ballot box. I honestly believe people have forgotten that milk is better for them than Coke. It’s time for that to change.

Demand management needs to include other reforms such as eliminating programs that stifle innovation in the industry. If the CCC quit buying powder, I have a feeling we would figure out a better use for it. We always do.

On the supply side we need reform of our price discovery system. We need a supply management plan that will efficiently send signals to the market to cut supply but not hinder domestic growth and international expansion. We need a safety net that is flexible, changes with market conditions, is equitable to all dairy farmers, and is not a burden on the taxpayer. We need to reform trade policy and definitions of dairy products so that “fair” trade wins out over “free” trade. We need to change our relationship with the processor and shift some of the responsibility for marketing and profit making to them.

There are many more issues to discuss and a lot of details need to be worked out. Honestly, I don’t have the solution to any of these problems, but I know enough to understand only a comprehensive plan will be sustainable. I cannot support a single tiered approach. The last 18 months have been hell, and the future is still uncertain. But one thing is for sure, if we don’t put our differences aside and lock ourselves in a room until we emerge together with a total solution, we won’t be here next year to fight about it. In my opinion, NMPF’s Foundation for the Future plan is a good start. Now let’s all go to work.

(Side Note:I did not write this article as an endorsement of the NMPF Foundation for the Future plan. I am merely suggesting this should be the basis of our conversations and foundation for total industry reform. If you find that you have an interest in this plan and are willing to start discussing it, take a moment to voice your opinion at this poll: http://poll.fm/1vhac. It would be nice to see where people really stand on this issue. FYI, the poll has been active for many months before the NMPF’s plan came into existence.)

DG

AG ALERT
Issue Date: June 23, 2010

By Ching Lee
Assistant Editor

Kings County dairy farmer Dino Giacomazzi is looking to the future, or more accurately, to the futures market.

After weathering one of the most financially tumultuous years in 2009, he and a growing number of dairy producers are increasingly turning to commodity futures and options to try to minimize their risks against the boom-bust effects that have pummeled the nation’s dairies during the current global recession.

Giacomazzi said he’s been taking classes for the last year and a half to learn the ins and outs of financial risk management, including how to hedge his feed costs and milk price through market futures and options, and forward contracting.

He said this knowledge will be invaluable as farmers and ranchers try to adapt to progressively more unpredictable economic conditions in the future.
“I think things were not as volatile in the past and so we’ve been able to survive the cycles thus far without risk management,” he said. “But now the cycles are much deeper and the low periods of the market are longer, so it’s something that we’re going to have to learn to do in order to survive.”

Lending institutions also are starting to encourage farmers to adopt risk management practices. In a recent report, Wells Fargo, the largest commercial agricultural lender in the U.S. and a major dairy lender, weighed in on the rising economic volatility farmers and ranchers face and the impact that will have on agricultural financing.

Using the dairy sector as a case study on margin volatility and how lenders are responding, the bank warned that the business of financing agriculture will need “to change to deal with this increased price and margin volatility.”

Michael Swanson, an agricultural economist for Wells Fargo and author of the report, said it’s not so much that lenders are requiring farmers and ranchers to do more risk management as a lending criterion; it’s that changes in agriculture and the economic environment are forcing farmers to have better business acumen and greater financial sophistication.

“And lenders are going to come to the realization that what was an appropriate debt-to-equity leverage before, in a less volatile environment, is not appropriate anymore, unless it’s accompanied by sophisticated risk management and good production practices,” he said.

While some producers are beginning to use risk management tools such as futures and options, forward contracting and insurance, Allison Specht, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, said these strategies, for the most part, are still not very popular among dairy farmers around the country.

“It’s difficult to learn,” she said. “It’s not something that producers have a great deal of experience with. But it’s something going forward that might be a good idea for the industry to look at.”
Up until 2007, dairy producers’ feed costs were relatively stable, Swanson said, so they didn’t worry much about the price of their milk falling significantly below their cost of production.

Also, producers were often rewarded for prioritizing their cost of production and labor management above everything else, he added, so there was little incentive for them to develop their hedging and financial analyses.
Aside from the complexity of futures markets, Giacomazzi said many farmers may still be reluctant to use them because of horror stories they might have heard about those who got burned.

Futures markets, however, are not new to agriculture, said Leslie “Bees” Butler, a dairy economist at the University of California, Davis. In fact, it was agriculture that first inspired the modern concept of futures trading, a process that was started in the 1840s in Chicago, which had become a major center for sale, distribution and storage of grain.

Before futures trading came about, farmers were often at the mercy of dealers when it came to selling their commodities. So a system was set up to allow farmers to lock in a price for a commodity early on and deliver it much later. This also allowed farmers and buyers to hedge their risks and speculate on the future price of the commodity.

“That’s what a futures contract is—a guarantee to sell at a certain price at a future date,” Butler said. “What you’re doing in the futures market is offsetting what you’re actually doing in the actual market.”

He said even though dairy farmers are used to futures contracts, such as when they forward-contract their feed to ensure a set price, many of them may not be hedging their purchase and managing their risks properly.
For example, when corn prices rose to record levels in 2008, many dairy farmers entered into feed contracts when prices were high, and then got locked in to those prices even when the price of milk came tumbling down in early 2009.

“What they should’ve done is once they bought that feed at that price, then they should’ve also gone to the commodity market, purchased a put option so that if the price of corn were to come down, then they would get some money back,” Giacomazzi said.

Butler said they also could have hedged their milk against the possibility of a price drop on the futures market.

“If you buy something today and you’re stuck with that price, you have risks—the risk of the price going up or down,” Giacomazzi explained. “But risk management is opening yourself up for an opportunity to capture some of the money back if the price goes up or down.

“When you manage risk, you fix a minimum price for your milk and a maximum price for your feed, and then you take advantage of any increase in milk or decrease in feed,” he said.

Butler said these financial tools are nothing more than insurance policies for the farm. He and Swanson agree that using these tools is too vital a function to outsource to consultants and recommend farmers learn to do it themselves.

They also stressed that having a strategy to reduce risk is important regardless of an operation’s size. And with increased volatility hitting every sector of agriculture, risk management is not just for dairies.
“If you’re going to be in the business, this is a core concept of agricultural production—the ability to look for risk mitigation in the futures market,” Swanson said.

Giacomazzi said while he’s glad to hear banks such as Wells Fargo are trying to promote risk management, he would like to see agricultural lenders “actively participate,” because ultimately they will have to provide the financing needed for farmers to implement their risk management plans.

“I think these banks are starting to look at it now because the dairymen are asking them,” he said.

Leonard Van Elderen, CEO of Yosemite Farm Credit in Turlock, said agricultural lenders such as the Farm Credit system are getting involved to the extent that they are providing seminars to educate farmers about what’s available to them.

“But there’s a fine balance there of encouraging education and lender liability,” he said. “We’re lenders. We’re not managers. And each of our members needs to make a decision for their own operation that suits them best.”
(Ching Lee is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at clee@cfbf.com.)

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item.

Recently I posted a list of my 10 favorite Android apps for farm productivity. Since then I have come across a couple others that I can not live without. Here they are:

Droid Light by Motorola - Free – (search android market) This is probably the most useful app in my tool box. This app simply turns on the super bright LED light on the back of the Motorola Droid so you can use it as a flashlight. It is surprisingly bright. If you don’t have a Motorola Droid you can download many other “flashlight” apps that turn all the screen pixels white. I’ve used this type of light since I got the Droid, but they pale in comparison to the LED flashlight.

Current Commodities – Free – (search android market) Current Commodities gives you prices and charts for some key commodity markets. It is not a full featured app by any means, it uses data provided by Yahoo! finance and Bloomberg which is fairly limited. But for a quick look at what the Corn market is doing, it works fine. For more indepth market information I use Futuresource.com. Future Source allows you to customize pages with charts & news. I use this on my home & office computers and use the droid web browser to check it from the phone. I have a shortcut on my phone desktop to get to the site with minimum effort.

Direct Dial Shortcuts – Free – (built in to Android) This is not an app, but it is important to productivity and worth mentioning here. One major benefit of Android over iPhone is the ability to create shortcuts and widgets on the desktop. Another is making folders. I make probably 100 phone calls a day on the dairy. I am constantly in communication with my employees, feed salesmen, parts stores, repair services, etc. I find it time consuming to always search for a contact and scrolling the list is even worse since I have 3000+ phone numbers in there. So here is a set by step guide to the most important sanitiy saving feature of Android.

1. Create a folder on your desktop by tapping your finger on a blank space and holding it there until the menu appears. Select Folders.
2. Click New Folder
3. Open the folder then click and hold on the word “folder” until the “rename folder” option appears. Rename something like “employees” or “Emergency #’s” etc. I have 3 folders, Family, Employee’s, and Dairy. Dairy contains all the numbers for frequently called vendors like feed salesmen & dairy supply companies.
4. In another blank space on the screen click and hold until the menu appears again. This time select “Shortcuts”
5. Now select Direct Dial if you want to select a phone number or Select Direct Message if you want a shortcut to send someone a text message. You can also select Contact which will allow you to select all the info from a single contact. For this example I am using Direct Dial
6. Once you have selected “direct dial” scroll the list until you find the number for the person you want to dial. Example, your spouse’s cell number.
7. After you select the number you want, an icon will appear on the desktop. Click and hold the icon until you feel the screen vibrate a little, then drag the icon into the folder you made in previous steps.
8. Repeat these steps until you have all the number you need.

Another way of getting address shortcuts to your desktop is by “Staring” contacts in your address book then place the “Starred Contacts” folder on your desktop. I have it both ways. People I want to have all their info available to me I “Star”. People whom I call regularly and use the same number, I use a direct dial link.

There you have it. Three more tools to help with on-farm productivity courtesy of google and the many people willing to volunteer their programming skills. I would like to suggest that if you find an app that is useful to you and they offer a paid version as well as a free version, use the paid version. This will ensure the continued advancement of the apps and guarantee you more productivity in the future.

I really don’t know why I would need to blog from my phone, but since worpress was nice enough to produce an app for android, I figued i’d give it a try.

It seems a pretty simple way to interact with comments on your site but I think pretty fast and can type almost as fast on the computer keyboard. I have to concentrate on typing with the motorola droid whih makes it hard to focus on the writing.

This message took me about 5 minutes to write. I really don’t have time for that.

Now that the new generation of Super Phones have arrived I have spent some time trying to find apps that help improve my personal productivity. Since I am a dairy farmer I’ve been looking for apps to help me be more productive on the farm. Most of these apps will benefit you no matter what your profession.

I have posted this article partly to help my friends who are moving to the Android platform. But I am also interested in starting a conversation here with other farmers about the use of mobile computing on the farm. If you have some apps you really like that I didn’t mention here, please include them in the comments. I just ask you try to relate the app in some way to on-farm productivity.

I included iPhone in the title since many of the apps I list below have iPhone equivalents. As a side note I think competition in the Android market is going to drive super phone technology and as a result all of us users will benefit. It is amazing to me how great these devices are, and they are really only in their infancy. 5 years from now things are going to look much different. I can’t wait.

I use a Motorola Droid but am looking forward to upgrading to the HTC Incredible or whatever next generation Motorola comes out with by the time I am eligible for an upgrade.

I should also mention I wrote this entire article while driving a tractor planting corn. I will post another article some day on how that works. For now I hope you find these productivity tools as useful as I do.

1. Remember the Milk – $25/Year – Free Online – RTM, oddly enough, has nothing to do with dairy or cows. It is a Things To Do list. It is a very advanced web based application that synchs to your Android phone. One thing I loved about the palm was the ease and power of its task list. I used this feature intensively. The only down side to RTM is there is an annual fee to use the Android app but I feel the $25/year more than pays for itself in increased productivity.

2. Evernote – Free or $45/year premium – Evernote is a multi-platform note taking program. You can use it on your desktop, on the web, or on the phone. I use Evernote on my laptop to take notes at meetings, keep track of important pieces of information like frequent flier numbers, tractor and equipment maintenance and parts numbers, etc. I do a lot of inputing on my desktop then access the info from the phone. I also use the voice note feature on the phone when I am driving around and want to leave myself a note for later retrieval. I currently use the premium version. I use it to synch files between my desktop computers and backup important documents.

3. Bubble – Free – (Search Android Market) Bubble is basically a bubble level. You will be suprised how often you need a level on a dairy, farm, or around the house. I used this app just the other day to level the tool bar on a John Deere 1700 Corn Planter. You need to calibrate the level when you first download it. Use a regular bubble level for calibration.

4. Target Date (lite) – Free – (Search Android Market) – Target Date is a simple program that calculates time between two dates. It also will tell you a date in the future or past by simply typing in a number. For example you can ask it what will the date be in 100 days from now. Or how many days are there between now and Dec 25. I use this to figure out planting and harvest dates and all kinds of fun other stuff. – No image available.

5. Ultra Chron (lite) – Free – (Search Android Market) – This is a stopwatch and count down timer. Basic. Useful. I use this to calibrate spray equipment. It was even used recently at our farm bureau’s candidate forum to keep time for the candidate’s speeches.

6. Weather Bug Widget – Free – (Search Android Market) – Weather Bug is a weather website. I like the Weather Bug Widget for android because the app gives you a lot of detail about the weather. Wind speed & direction, radar maps, and severe weather alerts. Very useful for planning on the farm. Especially the Radar. I also use an app called Radar Now which does only radar. It has a bigger map and higher radar resolution than most phone based radar services.



7. Calendar Pad – Free – (Search Android Market) – This is app extends the functionality of the default Android calendar which I found inadequate for the amount of use I give it. Calendar pad gives you month views that show your appointments. It also makes it easier to add entries into the calendar.



8. Real Calc – Free – (Search Android Market) – Real Calc has saved my life. This is the only calculator I’ve found for Android that does on the fly unit conversions. I use this feature a lot.. For example I want to know the number of acres for any given pass of the corn planter. I can enter (L) 1280ft x (W) 20 = 25600 sq ft. Then hold the conversion button and click SQFT then Acres. It will then return the number .587 Acres back to the calculator where I can then multiply by number of passes to get the total area. This is just one of many examples of what makes this the best Android calculator on the market. It’s a must have.



9. GPS Measure – Free – (Search Android Market) – This is a very cool app that will measure distance using the GPS in the phone and Google Maps. I use this tool to measure fields, check distance traveled for water, measure corrals and shades on the dairy, etc. It is not accurate enough to build a house with, but for big jobs it does good enough. I plan to send the author a note and ask if he can make the app have the ability to measure three or more points and give you the area contained within. This would be very helpful for measuring fields. – No image available.

10. My Maps Editor by Google – Free – (Search Android Market) – All this app does is allow you to access “My Maps” in google maps. I use google maps to mark and keep track of field data. I can use this little app to access that info from my phone in the field. You can also set up lists of places for a trip on your computer then access those points from the road.

In the year 2010 there is no reason to wade through millions of headlines about Tiger Woods’ shenanigans when all you want is news that has an impact on you. Here are some easy things you can do to save time and customize your personal news experience. This information will work for anyone but my intention here is to help farmers understand social media so all the links and references are to Ag related news sources. Read on!

RSS Feeds

Most blogs and popular websites like Yahoo, BBC, MSN and Google feature RSS, but what is it?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a really simple way to stay up to date with new content on your favorite websites.

Instead of visiting individual websites to see what’s new, you get automatic updates from many sites in one place. It’s a real time saver if you follow lots of different sites. And because you don’t have to supply any personal information to use it, RSS ensures your privacy too.

With RSS, you choose to receive updates from websites through ‘feeds’ and ‘readers’.

An RSS feed is:

• A news article, blog, audio clip, or video clip delivered strait to your reader
• simple as clicking on the RSS logo and confirming that you want to subscribe to the feed.

An RSS feed reader is:

• a central place to grab and store all feeds, so you have multiple updates in one place.

Using RSS is as easy as 1,2,3.

1. Look for sites that support RSS – this is the RSS Logo:


2. Subscribe to the feed you’re interested in
3. View the updates via your feed reader.

I suggest you use Google Reader for managing your feeds. I like using google because you can view the same information in many places. I read my news articles on my home computer, work computer, and my phone. I read mostly from my Motorola Droid but there are readers available for iPhone, Blackberry, and any phone with a mobile browser.

Most email applications double as RSS readers. Here are some tutorials on how to use popular email clients as RSS feed readers:

Microsoft Outlook
Yahoo! Mail
Apple Mail

A note on subscribing to a feed.
Most of the time when you click on the RSS icon it is going to take you to a page with a bunch of text all run together. At this point, copy and paste the URL into your news reader. For example, if you click on the RSS logo on the upper right corner of this page it will take you to a page with this URL: http://dinogiacomazzi.com/feed/ Just copy and paste that URL into your reader and you will be subscribed. Some web browsers will do this automatically for you.

Here is a list of some Ag oriented websites I subscribe to.

A Dairy Goddess’s Blog
Advocates for Agriculture
Ag – its not just a job, it’s an adventure!
American Farm Bureau: Latest News
Dairy Today
DTN Grain Market Summary
Truth Be Told – Trent Loos
Western United Dairymen
Gate to Plate Blog by Michele Payn-Knoper

You can also check all the links to news sources I have listed on the right side of this page. Many of them have RSS feeds, just look for the logo.

Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a very useful tool for searching news by keyword. Google Alerts allows you to set up searches, then whenever it finds something related to your search it will email it to you. For example, I have a Google Alert set up for my name, “Dino Giacomazzi”. Whenever my name is posted on a website or is in the news, Google sends me an alert via email. The cool thing is that it keeps track of what was sent in the past and only sends new postings.

I use Google Alerts to find news like “HSUS + Dairy”, “smelt + delta + water”, “animal welfare”, “milk price”, etc. I also use it to track pieces of legislation by number, “AB 1960″ or ‘”jobs bill” + water’.

It is important to be fairly specific with your searches or you will get hundreds of results.

Facebook
Facebook has many uses beyond looking at pictures of your friends drunk at a party. Facebook is a great place to find peer recommended news. Many people post links to news articles they find interesting. Chances are since this person is your friend or associate you may be interested in that article also.

First place to go in Facebook for news is the “News Feed”. This is where you get to see what your friends are posting. The news feed is a mix of status updates, links, videos, and other stuff. Facebook provides a way to filter the noise of the news feed on the left side of the page by clicking on “links”. This will show only posts from people who have included a link to another website. Much of this ends up being some sort of news…or a joke, either way you win.

Other ways to get news and information from Facebook are: becoming a fan of a page, joining a group, or joining a cause. These three options are places where people are having conversations on specific topics like Humane Watch, where people are talking about how crooked the Humane Society of the United States is, or Farm2U where consumers can ask farmers questions.

There are millions of Pages, Causes, and Groups in Facebook. Use the search box in Facebook to find things that interest you, then join in the conversation.

Here is a short list of some things I find useful in Facebook:

Save California’s Milk Supply – a Cause
I Love Farmers…they feed my soul – a Group
Animal Agriculture Alliance – a Page

This is a very short list. I am currently subscribed to hundreds of Groups, Pages, and Causes on Facebook.

Twitter

I don’t have time in this tutorial to explain what twitter is and how to use it but I will just say that twitter is a great source for news. Here are a couple of ways to find news via twitter:

1. Learn hash tags being used by people in agriculture and set up searches to monitor them. The most important hash tag is #agchat. Just type #agchat into twitter’s search box and you will see postings by hundreds of farmers from around the globe. Many of them are posting links to news.

2. Use Twitter’s “List” feature to follow people who post information your are interested in.

3. Find people tweeting links to news you are interested in then subscribe to their twitter feed with your RSS Reader.

Social News Communities

There are many websites dedicated exclusively to sharing news articles with groups. I haven’t personally gotten into these yet but I find it necessary to mention them here. The major social news sites are:

http://digg.com/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.mixx.com/

So there you have it, several options for bringing news you can use strait to you.

Now here is the most important part…once you have found some news of interest to you…SHARE it with your friends. That is what social media is all about. Sharing information.

http://www.alltech.com/kidzone/farmers/pages/FarmersDiary1.aspx

Just came across these videos on the farm aid website about the plight of the American dairy farmer. They are definately worth a watch.

http://www.farmaid.org/site/c.qlI5IhNVJsE/b.5456909/k.390B/2009_Webcast.htm

There is an interesting irony on this website though. Two of the major sponsors of the Farm Aid Concert are Horizon Organic milk and Silk. These two brands are owned by the very corporate farm companies that are causing the farmers to be broke in the first place. There is talk in these videos about milk manufacturers posting record profits while the dairy farmers go out of business. The company they are talking about is Dean Foods, the largest dairy processor in the US. Dean Foods owns Horizon Organic. So I suppose the irony is that Dean Foods is sponsoring an event that is essentially protesting them. This is a little like the tobacco companies advertising that you should quit smoking.

Take a look at the videos, they are very good.

DG

It’s fall, the corn has been harvested and this is the time we usually spread cow manure on the fields (organic fertilizer for crops). I didn’t realize that fall was also the time when our representatives spread their special kind of manure around Washington. The manure I speak of is Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, and Representative David Obey (D-WI), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, robbing $290 million destined for cheese and dairy product purchases for food banks and other nutrition and feeding programs and spending it on direct payments to dairy farmers. This allocation to help support the struggling dairy producers started out as $350 million to buy cheese for food banks. After these representatives got their hands on it they left only $60 million for the hungry and the rest in direct subsidies to farmers. “Why on earth does this dairy farmer oppose free money from the government?” I thought you would never ask, here is why:

Simply put, buying surplus cheese for immediate distribution in the form of food aid is a triple-net win-win-win. The use of the entire $350 million included for dairies in the 2010 Agriculture Appropriations conference report to reduce surplus cheese would have produced a much greater economic benefit to dairy farmers and related industries than direct payments. Cheese inventories need to be reduced in order for farm milk prices to rebound. The second win is the recipients of the cheese. Currently a record number of people rely on food banks whose inventories are critically low. The third win would go to the US government. I would suggest this administration could use a “feel good” story right now and a program that actually shows results.

The best part of this approach is that it benefits all dairymen equally. If the price of milk goes up a dollar, every dairyman gets a dollar for all his milk. The problem with direct payments is that they have caps. These caps cause an unequal distribution of the payments. So some dairymen get a benefit on all their milk while other dairymen get a benefit on a fraction of their milk.

Certainly an approach that treats all dairies across the country equally would be preferred but here is the real kicker to this deal. The MILC program (direct payments) actually prolongs the agony of lower prices by supporting and subsidizing the over production of milk. During a time of over supply it is in the interest of every dairy farmer across America to reduce the amount of surplus milk so that the price will go up. The idea of subsidizing dairy farmers to continue producing milk at surplus levels is counter productive.

I am a dairyman and I don’t want subsidies, I want a fair price for my milk. I believe that using the maximum amount of money available to the USDA to purchase surplus dairy products to feed the hungry is the smart, humanitarian thing to do. I believe that it will benefit all dairies equally via an increase in milk price. Do I think this is a long-term solution to our problem, no. But it is a fair and equitable solution for short term surplus management and the right thing for us to do.

I don’t want to have to answer the question when asked why I am taking welfare cash from the government when we have too much milk and people are going hungry. This is simply bad business and bad politics.

I suppose I sat down on a busy day here on the farm to express my disgust of this issue because I am tired of Washington and their constant politicizing of every issue as well as pandering to special interest groups. Yes that’s right, the mid-west and east coast dairy farmers, and the large dairy processors lobbied heavily to swipe $290 million from the mouths of America’s hungry in order to spread a few pennies amongst the dairymen and protect obscene profit margins by the processors.

It is time for all dairymen, east to west, large and small, Holstein, Jersey, and Brown Swiss to start taking a more holistic view of solving our price issues and realize that we need to invest in our entire industry and stop perpetuating these regional differences.

Dairymen in Wisconsin & New York, call your Senators and tell them that an economic analysis and USDA Cold Storage Report for August shows farmers could have gotten a better deal with a bigger cheese purchase and donation.