Dairy farmers are finding themselves in a pickle – they said their farms are hanging by a string due to large co-ops taking over small farms.
Dairy farming is the largest agricultural sector in New York State. Carroll Wade, owner of Wade Farms in Jasper, New York tells 18 News: “The last two or three years, farmers have grown their production beyond what the markets will bear and so you have inadequate consumption of milk and dairy products and disappearance of the overall products on the market.” Wade also serves as the President of the National Farmers Organization in New York.
Anthony Marco owns Plain Jane Holsteins, a dairy farm in Jasper, New York and is concerned a big corporation called ‘Dairy Farmers of America’ will soon take over and dismiss the small farms.
“By allowing the big farm to get bigger and allowing the over supply of milk production in this region is keeping the price of milk down. That’s not allowing me to make a profit, not allowing me to expand my operations a little bit to be more profitable,” said Marco.
A spokesperson from Dairy Farmers of America told 18 News “DFA is not currently looking at cooperative acquisitions in the Northeast. In addition to creating and delivering value to the nearly 13,000 farmer-owners of DFA, we also work to market milk for affiliated cooperatives under the Dairy Marketing Services, LLC (DMS) umbrella. DFA has partnerships with various milk marketing cooperatives within the DMS system, which works to create increased efficiencies in milk assembly, hauling and field services.”
Senator Chuck Schumer weighs in on the question dairy farmers are asking: Is there a solution of the over production of milk and under capacity for processing dairy products?
“We are trying to get the old Kraft Heinz factory to have a new use which will help our dairy farmers,” said Senator Schumer. “We are trying to get some more of the people who use the milk to locate here in the Twin Tiers because there is a need for milk products and our farmers need new markets.”
Source: MyTwinTiers.com
