Dairy Industry

NEW MIDWAY - Maryland's dairy industry is looking for new ways to expand milk consumption and broaden its market to help offset a sharp drop in milk prices that continues to force farms out of business. Patricia Purcell, director of retail sales promotion at the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association, told farmers at this year's annual meeting of the Maryland Dairy Industry Association that the key to improving their declining fortunes is to get more people to drink more milk. While milk consumption among children ages 6 to 12 rose in 2001 for the first time in many years, per capita consumption is at its 1991 level.

John Y. Crow, a retired salesman of dairy products and a decorated World War II veteran, died of complications from pneumonia April 8 at Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in Southern Maryland. He was 89 and had lived in North Baltimore. Born in Uniontown, Pa., and raised in Towson, he was a 1941 graduate of Towson High School. He earned an animal husbandry degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also attended a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. He went into military service in the Army.

Consumers stand to pay 3 cents to 4 cents a gallon more for milk at the supermarket if negotiators for Maryland's dairy farmers and five milk processors agree on a higher price for milk at the farm level.Myron Wilhide, interim president of the Maryland Dairy Association, disclosed the negotiations yesterday at a meeting of the Maryland Agricultural Commission near Queenstown. The commission is an advisory group to the state Department of Agriculture.Wilhide said farmers were negotiating for an increase of 40 cents per hundredweight, equal to about 3.5 cents a gallon, and early indications are that milk processors are agreeable.

Andy and Mary Laudenklos each spend more than 70 hours a week caring for their 600 cows, delivering calves and overseeing the milking at their Carroll County dairy farm - and they're also raising three young sons. The couple and their three-year-old business, East West Farm outside Union Bridge in Carroll County, are struggling. They have doubled the size of their herd and hope to one day procure a robotic milker, all to turn the operation profitable. They are just breaking even now. Dairy farmers are an increasingly rare breed in Maryland, where such operations are disappearing at a rate twice the national average.

Maryland dairy farmers pushing for extension of a compact that sets milk prices were buoyed yesterday by the news that the Pennsylvania legislature passed a measure that would bring that state into the regional pricing group.The Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact already sets drinking-milk prices for six states in the Northeast and can only be extended to contiguous states. Maryland, where the governor and legislature have already approved joining the compact, became eligible after Delaware joined in May.The compact, however, is set to expire in October unless the U.S. House and Senate vote to extend it, and passage is not certain.

David Crowl, a dairy farmer from Street, was among more than 65 Dairy Farmers of America Inc. board members and young cooperators who visited Capitol Hill last month to discuss issues affecting the dairy industry. DFA members and staff convened in Washington, D.C., for the cooperative's annual D.C. Board Meeting and Hill Visits, where they conducted more than 175 visits with legislators. Crowl met Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, who represents northern Harford County, and his staff and the staffs of Maryland Sens.

DETOUR -- Myron L. Wilhide remembers when there were 11 dairy farms along the 2 1/2 -mile stretch of country road that connects this tiny, rural community with Keysville.Today, he and his brother, Richard, operate one of only three that still exist. The other dairy farms, along with a milk-cooling plant a quarter of a mile from Wilhide's farm, have gone out of business since the early 1960s.The loss of dairy farms is not limited to rural sections of Carroll County. It's a statewide problem.

YOUR FEB. 4 editorial against setting minimum milk prices in Maryland ("Milk commission does a body no good") is incomplete. As a result, your conclusion is in error. Maryland milk producers want a level playing field. As long as Pennsylvania and Virginia establish minimum milk prices, Maryland will continue to be a dumping ground with implications for her dairy producers, consumers, and the environment.Maryland dairy producers have a proud history of providing a reliable and safe product while protecting the environment.

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.

Maryland dairy farmers have shifted direction in their search for a solution to the financial problems that have forced more than 40 percent of their colleagues out of business since 1988.Myron L. Wilhide, president of the Maryland Dairy Industry Association, told dairymen attending the group's first meeting in Frederick yesterday that it will seek General Assembly approval for the state to become a member of an emerging Southern states milk compact.The compact would link 15 states, stretching from Maryland to Texas, into a marketing group that would set the farm price of milk at a level that would make milking cows more profitable.

David Crowl, a dairy farmer from Street, was among more than 65 Dairy Farmers of America Inc. board members and young cooperators who visited Capitol Hill last month to discuss issues affecting the dairy industry. DFA members and staff convened in Washington, D.C., for the cooperative's annual D.C. Board Meeting and Hill Visits, where they conducted more than 175 visits with legislators. Crowl met Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, who represents northern Harford County, and his staff and the staffs of Maryland Sens.

Maryland agriculture received the second show of support from state government in as many weeks, when the Ehrlich administration announced Monday the creation of a panel aimed at helping the dairy farm industry, a segment that has been shrinking rapidly in recent years. Achieving by executive order what state legislators could not accomplish during the General Assembly session, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. established the Maryland Dairy Industry Advisory Council and charged it with looking for ways to boost the viability of dairy farms.

POCOMOKE CITY - Dan Holland is a rarity in this part of Maryland: He milks cows for a living. The 37-year-old farmer is the last dairyman in Worcester County. For that matter, he notes ruefully, "There is only one dairy farmer in Somerset and Wicomico." "Traveling south ... I have to go about 100 miles, nearly to Norfolk, Virginia, before I come to the next dairy herd," the tall, slender farmer said as he leaned against a crate of red peppers, painted in the black-and-white pattern of Holstein cows at his farm store on U.S. 50 just east of Berlin.

NEW MIDWAY - Maryland's dairy industry is looking for new ways to expand milk consumption and broaden its market to help offset a sharp drop in milk prices that continues to force farms out of business. Patricia Purcell, director of retail sales promotion at the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association, told farmers at this year's annual meeting of the Maryland Dairy Industry Association that the key to improving their declining fortunes is to get more people to drink more milk. While milk consumption among children ages 6 to 12 rose in 2001 for the first time in many years, per capita consumption is at its 1991 level.

Farmers attending today's annual meeting of the Maryland Dairy Industry Association in Westminster should have a little more money in their pockets this year. "Milk prices are at a record high," said Myron Wilhide, a Carroll County farmer who milks 205 cows and is president of the Maryland Dairy Industry Association. According to a computer printout, the average price of milk sold at the farm so far this year is nearly $15 per hundredweight. Wilhide's milk payment last month topped $18.50.

TULARE, Calif. - To understand how serious the utility crisis has become in California, consider the case of the Land O' Lakes Inc. Western Region factory here, the largest milk processing plant in the United States. Every day, 34 refrigerated tankers make several round trips from 200 dairies across the state to a six-block compound here. These trucks bring in a total of 230 tanker loads, or 11 million to 12 million pounds of milk, every 24 hours, 365 days a year. To keep the production line from dairy to processing plant flowing smoothly, Land O' Lakes runs a tight operation: Tankers come in, unload their milk and go. If a plant were shut down, the milk trucks would be delayed, the dairies' operations would get backed up and their perishable product would have to be dumped.

Maryland agriculture received the second show of support from state government in as many weeks, when the Ehrlich administration announced Monday the creation of a panel aimed at helping the dairy farm industry, a segment that has been shrinking rapidly in recent years. Achieving by executive order what state legislators could not accomplish during the General Assembly session, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. established the Maryland Dairy Industry Advisory Council and charged it with looking for ways to boost the viability of dairy farms.

HAGERSTOWN -- While grain and livestock farmers are struggling through one of their worst seasons ever, Maryland dairy farmers are benefiting from record high milk prices.Those prices -- which have been 25 percent to 30 percent above last year's level -- are probably not sustainable, Myron Wilhide, president of the Maryland Dairy Industry Association, told about 150 farmers attending the association's annual meeting yesterday."Things are definitely a lot better than last year," when milk prices were low and the Central Maryland dairy region suffered through the most severe drought in 35 years, Wilhide said.

EVER SINCE Jill Torene was a baby, she has loved animals. Her mother, Laurie, remembers reading to Jill before the little girl could talk. No matter what the story was about, Jill would search diligently through the pictures until she found an animal. Other little girls asked for dolls, but Jill wanted a dog, a fish or a hamster. So when she was 11 years old and a friend told her about a 4-H leasing program that would enable her to work with cows at the former Naval Academy Dairy Farm, Jill jumped at the chance.

WASHINGTON -- With the stakes in the billions of dollars, the process of deciding what the nation should eat -- always political -- is turning even more contentious. A respected committee of doctors and nutrition experts is preparing to submit next month its five-year review of the federal government's dietary guidelines. Industry advocates are burying the panel under reams of statistics and studies that hail the benefits of eating red meat, consuming dairy products and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol.