dairy prices

Dairy farmers will vote in the weeks ahead on a package of milk marketing reforms that includes a higher price for fresh milk destined for table consumption, said the USDA on Tuesday. The Agricultural Marketing Service issued its so-called final decision, opening the way for the farmer referendum, after a 60-day comment period and a final review of the proposed amendments.

Sharply lower prices for palm, sunflower and soybean oils helped pull down the Food Price Index marginally from its record high that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Grain prices also fell during April while meat, dairy and sugar prices rose.

Dairy farmers in Canada are paid about $24 per hundred pounds of milk, nearly $10 more than their American counterparts, who may live mere miles to the south.

Dairy Farmers of America, the 20-year-old product of the largest merger in dairy cooperative history, has become a vertically integrated “corporation” that enjoys the legal benefits of a cooperative while increasingly serving its own bottom line rather than its member farmers, says Washington Monthly.

Two-thirds of the way through 2017, the government says grocery prices are headed for a barely perceptible increase of 0.25 percent this year, thanks to lower red meat, egg and fresh produce prices. This year's marginal increase follows the first instance of retail food price deflation in half a century, the 1.3-percent year-on-year decline in grocery prices in 2016.

The Agricultural Marketing Service will publish a proposal for a California Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) on Feb. 14, says Agri-Pulse. The order would regulate product prices between the farmer and first buyer. And California, which prod

The USDA said it plans to buy about 11 million pounds of cheese for food banks and pantries across the nation, reducing a cheese surplus that is at its highest level in 30 years. The purchase, valued at $20 million, came after a concerted campaign by the dairy industry, which is facing a 35-percent drop in revenues.

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 they cope with milk prices at seven-year lows, Agri-Pulse reported. In the past two years, milk sales have fallen $16 billion, AFBF President Zippy Duvall said in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

To bolster milk prices and help keep dairy farmers in business, the USDA should buy up to 90 million pounds of cheese and donate it to food banks, says the National Milk Producers Federation.

The Agriculture Department said it sent $11.2 million in a monthly payment to dairy farmers through the insurance-like Margin Protection Program, calculated at the highest payment rate since MPP began in 2014. A week ago, 61 lawmakers urged USDA to respond to low milk prices through larger federal purchases of dairy products and to "offer financial assistance that will directly support U.S. dairy farmers equally."