The American Farm Bureau Federation asked the USDA to provide emergency assistance to U.S. dairy farmers, including purchasing millions of pounds of cheese for government nutrition programs, as farmers cope with milk prices at seven-year lows, Agri-Pulse reported. In the past two years, milk sales have fallen $16 billion from record high levels, AFBF President Zippy Duvall said in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
He said the Farm Bureau supports the recent request for emergency assistance from 61 members of Congress. “The decline in dairy farm revenue has led many dairy farm families to exit the industry,” Duvall wrote. “In 2015 we lost 1,225 dairy farms — many of those small dairy farm operations where the average herd size is fewer than 200 milking cows.”
Duvall said lower dairy exports, increased production in Europe, expansion of the U.S. dairy herd due to economic signals in 2014 and a record high domestic cheese inventory continued to weigh on domestic markets, Agri-Pulse reported. USDA is projecting a 2016 average milk price of $15.70 per hundredweight, down 35 percent from 2014 and the second lowest level in the past decade, AFBF said.