The Dairy Together Coalition of farmers and industry stakeholders is advocating for the dairy revitalization plan. Bobbi Wilson, the Wisconsin Farmers Union Dairy Together Program Coordinator, is working hard on this plan to create a viable dairy industry.
The dairy revitalization plan is a proposal for a national dairy growth management program that essentially coordinates the growth in milk production among all dairy farmers to help stabilize milk prices and improve those prices for everybody in the industry.
“Different people have different ideas of what a viable industry looks like but I think for us at Wisconsin Farmers Union through this dairy together project, we see a viable dairy industry as one that has stability and profitability for family farmers,” explains Wilson.
The plan’s goal is to make sure that farmers have more money in their pockets and more money to spend in their own communities so they can make a living doing the thing that they love. There is also a social benefit to creating better stability in the industry for environmental and conservation reasons.
“Coming out of the pandemic we saw what happens when we have a highly consolidated agricultural industry and there’s a shock to that system which causes empty shelves in the grocery store,” adds Wilson. “That’s what creates the supply chain disruptions that we saw during the pandemic and we feel that it’s taking a lesson from that and taking steps now to diversify food production and processing in more places across the country, that will put us in a better position if and when another shock to the system comes along.”
The Wisconsin Farmers Union proposal has an economic analysis that shows that it would improve prices, net Farm operating income for farmers of all sizes, and it would reduce government expenditures.
Wilson noted that in 2014 there was significant effort into including a growth management program in the farm bill but it didn’t go through. Then the year after, prices bottomed out and the world entered a five year dairy crisis. That is what sparked the dairy together project as she feels that if the 2023 farm bill passes without this being included, the world is not learning from the past and walking into another crisis.
“Due to what we are seeing with consolidation in the beef industry and elsewhere in agricultural sectors, it makes sense that now is the time to connect and create a more stable and resilient industry across all of agriculture,” adds Wilson.
Wilson encourages people to Imagine a job where you would go to work everyday, doing the exact same job, and some years you make $15 an hour and some years you make $7. That would never work and no one would accept that. Yet that is what dairy farmers have been going through for decades and is why this dairy revitalization plan is so important.
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