Nineteen of 120 wholesale farms in New Hampshire have closed in the past year amid prolonged drought and low milk prices. (COURTESY)
Republican state Rep. Bob Haefner of Hudson on Wednesday wrote to Agriculture Commissioner Lorraine Merrill, asking for her help in scheduling a meeting of the state board that presides over a milk farmers’ emergency fund.
Haefner also serves as chair of the Milk Producers Emergency Relief Board, which was created by the Legislature in 2008 but has never been funded.
That doesn’t mean the state hasn’t helped distressed dairy farmers in the past. In 2007, during a similar time of low wholesale milk prices, the Legislature enacted the Emergency Dairy Assistance Program, a one-time investment of $2.1 million.
“I had a number of dairy farmers tell me at the time that it saved their business,” Haefner said. “It gave each of them something in the range of $40,000, so if nothing else it helped pay their real estate taxes and buy some feed.”
The next year, in 2008, the Legislature created the emergency relief fund and a board to manage it. Agriculture commissioners have consistently requested funding for the board in their budgets, but it has consistently been cut, said Haefner.
“People see it as an increase in the budget, because it wasn’t there last year,” he said.
Haefner is expecting the relief fund board to meet within the next two weeks, and issue an emergency call for immediate assistance of about $2 million. Failing that, he hopes to at least get the board funded in the next biennial budget.
He and his co-chair on the House Environment and Agriculture Committee, Rep. Tara Sad of Walpole, have asked for a meeting with Gov. Maggie Hassan.
“Representative Sad and I went to the governor’s office on Tuesday, asking for time with her,” said Haefner. “I still don’t have that scheduled, but we hope to sit down with the governor to see if she can help us budget money for the next biennium or hopefully find something this year, although I don’t have a lot of hope for that right now.”
At a dairy farming forum in Claremont on Monday, U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster said a federal insurance program designed to help dairy farms survive periods of low milk prices has been ineffective in the Granite State, since it was largely designed for large “factory farms” in the Midwest.
Jolyon Johnson, who with his family operates the Sanctuary Farm in Sunapee, says saving dairy farms is important to the state as a whole. Johnson was named dairy farmer of the year for 2016 by the New England Green Pastures Committee.
“Agriculture is an important part of the New England economy, maintaining open vistas and supporting wildlife,” he said in receiving the award. “Local food production and tourism are enhanced by the continuing success of our dairy industry.”
