Issues Agriculture Farm Bill Dairy

Dairy farmers have a lot at stake in the Farm Bill. I was pleased that the Senate voted to extend the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program at the original payment rate of 45 percent. Until now, the effectiveness of the MILC program has been diminished by a reduced payment rate from the 2002 Farm Bill. MILC is an important and responsible safety net for small and medium Wisconsin dairies that only makes payments to farmers when prices are low.

The Senate Farm Bill would also establish a commission to examine the Federal Milk Marketing Order system and to make recommendations to improve the system. I hope such a commission would come up with ways to eliminate the inequities faced by dairy farmers in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest. For 60 years, this system has discriminated against dairy producers in the Upper Midwest by awarding a higher price to dairy farmers in proportion to their distance from areas of high milk production, which historically has been the region around Eau Claire. This may have made some sense when transportation was more difficult and refrigeration was limited, but those days are long gone.

Dairy farmers in Wisconsin need a level playing field to compete with not only dairy farmers across the nation, but imports of Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC). Given our nation’s influx of unsafe imports, high protein imports such as MPC need to be rigorously inspected for safety. I am pleased the Senate Farm Bill includes an amendment I offered that directs the USDA and FDA to study and report on the process for inspecting MPC imports and other high protein ingredients. As reports of adulterated wheat gluten from China demonstrate, we need to pay more attention to the safety and quality of imported high protein ingredients such as gluten and MPCs.

Accurate reporting of dairy prices and oversight of dairy markets is also important to ensure a level playing field for dairy farmers. I authored a requirement, also included in the Senate Farm Bill, that dairy price reports be regularly audited and that the USDA better coordinate its oversight of dairy markets. This requirement is in response to a GAO report done at my request. The report suggested that cash cheese trading is still prone to manipulation, and that’s in addition to last year’s discovery of a long-term price reporting error for non-fat dry milk that cost dairy farmers $50 million in lost income.

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