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| Well Markwright, the big boys are losing money too. At least in my area they are. With the high cost of feed, it is a losing battle. They only way it is working is if you raised all your own feed, but then you are still losing because you would be better off selling your feed on the open market as you would make more than putting it though milk cows.
Behog, why the hard on for Idaho? Did they give your state an exclusive on milking and processing product? A few facts for you, we don't have a federal milk order here, so Gov. doesn't set our price. What insurance program are you talking about, the LGM program from the RMA ( Government subsidized ) or the MILC program? Both of those are a joke for big Idaho dairymen as well as small dairies like me. The MILC program was structured for small dairies ( about 120 cow max. ) Same as the LGM program if it structured for dairies in your area ( under 400 cow dairies ). That insurance was all sold up in less than a half day when they opened up this fall. About the only way I can see a big dairy to insure themselves is to play the futures game, but that doesn't work for the small dairyman.
I agree with most everything I read here tonight, DFA is a big problem here. They are lowering prices paid to their producers in my area, but then they are building a dry powder plant in Fallon, Nv. It doesn't make sense to me, the producers in that Co-op need to clean house on the upper management!
Believe me I would love to see the Gov. out of the farming business, but their is so many producers that feel they need them to exist in business. Everything they touch; they mess it up.
The reason the big dairies ended up in moving from California is they got pushed out and moved to other states like Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, etc. They made big money selling their real estate, then could double their size or triple coming to places like Idaho, where at first they didn't regulate. Now Idaho is cracking down on them with tighter restrictions to building.
I don't know much, but I know we shouldn't be bickering as dairymen, it is the CME, middlemen that are profiting off your hard work. The CWT program was a great concept because it was producer funded (not a Government funded program as some people think). But I felt is was administered wrong, they should have idled barns longer than they did. Also they should have been working on the export market right from the start. It was just a way for some to line their pockets with more money when they retired.
It is such a boondoggle of a mess, I don't know how it ever can be cleaned up. | |
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dairy/farmbill/MILC
