My Take: Let’s make dairy markets fair, encourage independent family farming
June is Dairy Month, so it’s a perfect time to reflect upon our state’s largest agricultural commodity. As a third-generation farmer on my family’s centennial farm in Isabella County, I’ve witnessed many changes. For years, we enjoyed raising cows on pasture. But as time went on, it became financially impossible to continue this way of life.
The dairy industry is rife with problems. As the number of U.S. dairy farms has rapidly declined in recent years, just five percent of dairy operations produce 56 percent of our country’s milk. The main drivers of this concentration are overproduction and policies driven by big dairy corporations and their well-paid lobbyists who get the upper hand at the expense of independent farmers and people who buy milk products.
I’m not the only one who’s been affected. Thousands of other dairy farmers across the country share a similar story, and it shouldn’t be this way.
As president of the Michigan Farmers Union (MFU), I’m working with our allies and elected officials to advocate for the needs of independent family farmers who are too often ignored in policy decision making. We need fairness for farmers, which means encouraging equitable outcomes for rural farming communities and ending policies that favor just a few large corporate farms.
MFU has been working with Wisconsin Farmers Union and other partners on a campaign called Dairy Together. It is a farmer-led movement to create thriving family farms and vibrant rural communities. We’re calling for a national growth management program to level the playing field for family dairy farms of all sizes. We must also break up large corporations that have a stranglehold on our system.
Rather than competing with one other, milk producers should work together. It is unsustainable for large-scale industrial operations to reap a larger market share to benefit their wealthy investors while independent farmers struggle to stay afloat. We can’t allow Big Ag to continue to promote overproduction and consolidation, decimating independent family farms and our collective voice in the process.
When milk production isn’t under control, the system becomes volatile, which is the last thing that farmers and eaters need. When prices fluctuate, farmers don’t have a good estimate of how much money they’ll take home from month to month or year to year.
It’s not workable nor fair for a producer to discover their pay amount until well after their product goes to market just because the middleman got a better deal.
As designed, the current system squeezes farmers' incomes when there’s too much milk, which is why we must avoid milk overproduction. By coordinating milk production growth to better align with demand, dairy farmers would be able to anticipate from year to year how much milk they need to produce to reach their desired level of profitability, giving them a greater ability to budget out and make capital improvements.
These reforms require oversight, and farmers must be part of the process. No longer will the Big Dairy lobby set the rules; independent farmers should have a voice in getting to decide major decisions affecting them and their livelihood. Democratically elected boards at the national and regional levels, controlled by farmers, will set annual production growth levels to keep prices stable and profitable for the majority of farmers.
We should also protect farmers and eaters from market manipulation and corporate control over our food system. In addition to curbing overproduction and prioritizing farmer profitability, we must strengthen and enforce antitrust laws and block mergers and acquisitions that result in monopoly power and unfair prices for farmers and families who purchase food.
Throughout the next few months, Michigan Farmers Union will gather with like minded advocates to educate farmers and the public about these important reforms to the dairy industry. We need everyone –– milk producers, people who buy and consume milk products –– to get to the bottom of this crisis and work toward fairer and better dairy that will benefit all.
— Bob Thompson is president of the Michigan Farmers Union. Michigan Farmers Union, in collaboration with the Dairy Together coalition. Learn more at DairyTogether.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: My Take: Let’s make dairy markets fair, encourage independent family farming
