Dairy Industry

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.

Maryland dairy farmers have picked up the support of Gov. Parris N. Glendening in their battle for milk price control legislation designed to halt the decline in the number of dairy farms operating in the state.The governor said that he backs a bill in the General Assembly that would make Maryland part of an existing Northeast dairy compact that sets the price farmers receive for Class 1 (drinking) milk at a level that makes milking cows profitable."I support the legislation. I intend to work for the legislation and I will sign it," the governor told about 800 applauding farmers and lawmakers at the annual Maryland Agriculture Week banquet in Glen Burnie Thursday night.

FREDERICK -- For the second time in three years, a state task force looking into the economic woes of Maryland's dairy industry is recommending a price-support plan that could reverse the trend of farms going out of business, but would likely result in consumers paying more for dairy products at the supermarket."

A Wisconsin-based grass-roots organization created to boost the price farmers receive for their milk is seeking to establish a foothold in Maryland."We have got to do something," said Eddie Boyer, who milks 75 cows on his 160-acre farm a few miles south of Frederick. "There's no money in milking cows. Dairy farmers are going out of business every day, and nobody seems to care."Boyer, 39, and his wife, Beth, 37, are spearheading the recruiting efforts in Maryland for the American Raw Milk Producers Pricing Association (ARMPPA)

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.

When a $254 million aid package for Baltimore schools was hanging in the balance last year, Del. Ellen Willis Miller of Carroll County rose on the floor of the Maryland House to give an emotional speech in support of city schoolchildren.It was a risky move for Willis Miller, a Democrat from a county in which elected officials of her party are an endangered species.But yesterday, she and other rural delegates who cast tough pro-Baltimore votes in recent years got their reward. With strong support from the city delegation, the House of Delegates approved a dairy price-support bill that was as important to many of them as the 1997 school aid or 1996 Ravens stadium votes were to Baltimore.

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.

The Maryland dairy industry may weather the worst drought in 30 years, but farmers in Carroll County and elsewhere cannot survive falling prices for milk, their main source of income, according to dairy officials.Many producers report monthly losses of as much as $6,000 on milk shipped to processors, who attribute the drop to market fluctuations. With beef prices also dropping, farmers cannot rely on cattle sales to offset losses."A lot of dairy farmers would sell out, except the value of their cattle is so low," said Myron L. Wilhide, president of the Maryland Dairy Industry Association.

A bill in the General Assembly designed to help stabilize Maryland's declining dairy industry by allowing the state to set a minimum price on milk has become the center of one of the most heated controversies in the industry since Mrs. O'Leary's cow was accused of kicking over the lantern that ignited the Great Chicago Fire.Maryland's dairy industry, the third largest segment of agriculture with farm sales of $180 million a year, is being clobbered, proponents of the bill say, because the state is caught between two states -- Pennsylvania and Virginia -- that have price-support programs which allow them to undercut the market in Maryland.

On a raw, foggy Saturday morning in October, Melba and Terry Hall watched stoically as an auctioneer sold the last of their Westminster dairy farm, piece by piece.Spread out on fields behind the barn were hay wagons, tractors, fence posts, cow feeders and an array of smaller items, including buckets, milk cans, even a weather vane with a cow on top."It's a lifetime," said Melba Hall, 40, as she looked at the used farm equipment lined up for quick sale Oct. 25.More than 150 people turned out for the grim ritual that has become all too familiar among Maryland dairy farmers.