Dairy Farmers

OCEAN CITY -- Maryland dairy farmers yesterday broadened their search for a solution to the financial problems that have forced more than 40 percent of their colleagues out of business over the past decade.Along the way, they picked up the political clout of the Maryland Farm Bureau, the state's largest farm organization, with 14,800 members.In a last-minute decision, dairy operators voted unanimously to join any regional marketing compact establishing an interstate milk pricing system.Until yesterday, farmers had planned to seek General Assembly approval for the state to become a member of a new Southern states compact that would link 15 states stretching from Maryland to Texas.

The federal court decision last week ordering the Department of Agriculture to discontinue its system for pricing milk will drive what is left of the dairy industry in Maryland out of business, the state's largest farm organization said yesterday.In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, the 14,800-member Maryland Farm Bureau urged the USDA to move swiftly to appeal U.S. District Judge David Doty's ruling in Minnesota that would invalidate much of the nation's system of pricing milk.

Carroll legislators support a Maryland Milk Commission to help bring higher milk prices for dairy farmers, but the most senior member of the county delegation predicted that legislation establishing one would not pass in the General Assembly this year."

The next time you find yourself driving along a country road and you spot a cow chewing lazily on her cud and swishing her tail at the flies, have some respect.No mere Bossy or Elsie, the creature you behold might, in fact, be . . . Super Cow!As The Sun's Tom Keyser noted in a recent article, the average milk-making bovine of the Nineties squirts out 16,000 pounds of the nutritious liquid every year, or more than triple what its 1940s counterpart offered. (A gallon of milk weighs 8.6 pounds.

WARNING TO state legislators: Non semper ea sunt quae videntur, as the Roman fables writer Phaedrus put it. Things are not always what they seem. For proof, look at bills advancing in the legislature to set milk price controls.The goal is to help Maryland dairy farmers, who have been staggered by the public's declining taste for milk even as production per cow soars. The solution: Artificially inflate milk prices at the wholesale and retail levels.In reality, these bills will almost certainly force retailers to reduce, not increase, their purchase of raw milk from Maryland farmers.

MOUNT PLEASANT -- Nearly 100 dairy farmers from around the state converged on this rural Frederick County community with high hopes of finding a solution to the financial problems that have forced one out of every four dairymen out of business in recent years.They gathered this week at the Ruritan Club hall to hear the details of a controversial plan that would give them -- not the milk processors or the federal government -- the power to set milk prices.Although the cooperatives that purchase their milk and deliver it to processing plants had agreed the day before to pay farmers 40 cents a hundredweight, or 3.4 cents a gallon, more for Class 1 milk (drinking milk)

Faced with wholesale milk prices that are at a 25-year low, Maryland's dairy farmers could see some relief over the next year under a plan by the National Milk Producers Federation to boost prices by trimming cattle herds and cutting back the nation's milk production. The plan - called Cooperatives Working Together - could help boost the wholesale price of milk by 9 percent over the next 12 months, said Christopher Galen, the federation's vice president of communications. Dairy farmers in Maryland and throughout the Northeast won't be expected to reduce production significantly under the voluntary plan - the greatest cutbacks would likely occur in the Southwest and Northwest, Galen said yesterday.

COLUMBUS, Wis. - Neighboring dairy farmers in Columbus, Wis., thought Jim Miller and his family had embarked on a path to bankruptcy when they decided to produce organic milk. How could you run a farm without chemicals and make milk for a market that barely existed? That was over a decade ago, and the neighbors turned out to be wrong. Organic became the sweet spot of the milk business, providing farmers such as Miller with more-stable prices, and often more profits, than conventional dairy operations see. But over the past year, the milk business has been turned on its head, with many organic farmers getting squeezed as never before and conventional dairy farmers enjoying the best of times.

Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest says he wants the Justice Department to investigate milk marketing in Maryland and in other parts of the country to determine if there are violations of antitrust laws. The 1st District Republican has joined 34 other members of Congress in sending a letter to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno this week requesting an investigation into why prices that consumers pay for dairy products are so high when farmers are getting so little for their milk. "We don't think the disparity in the price consumers pay for milk at the grocery is warranted, based on the price farmers are getting for their milk," Gilchrest said.

Competition from neighboring states is hurting Maryland's dairy industry, supporters of a proposed milk commission told the House Environmental Matters Committee yesterday.The seven-member commission -- suggested in a bill submitted by Del. Donald B. Elliott of New Windsor -- would require that farmers be paid a specific price for raw milk. Dairymen from Virginia and Pennsylvania, two of four states that have similar commissions, are dumping excess milk in Maryland and undercutting prices, supporters said.