You cheddar believe it.
There is a massive 1.4 billion pound cheese glut in the United States. But what that cheese glut reveals is that it’s getting harder for small dairy farms to compete.
“Milk is so complicated. And nobody knows how it got this way,” said farmer Layne Klein.
Klein is a third-generation dairy farmer and owner of Klein’s Dairy Farm in Northampton County. According to the USDA, milk production has gone up 13 percent in the last 10 years.
“40 years ago the average cow produced 15 or 16,000 pounds a year. Now they’re producing 23 to 24,000 a year,” said Klein.
But dairy consumption is on the decline, thanks to Americans adopting vegan diets and nut milks.
“Fluid milk consumption per person has gone down for the last 30 years,” said Klein.
So if demand is down, why is supply up? Could it be subsidies? Not really.
“What they’ve done now is they’ve put the burden of subsidy on the farmer. So you’re supposed to take out almost basically an insurance policy,” said Klein.
Klein has a different explanation.
“We do not control the price of milk when it goes to the dairy. They tell us what they’re gonna pay us. The only way you can make more income is make more milk,” said Klein.
Which has created a vicious cycle. In order for dairy farms to make enough income, they make more milk. The more of a surplus there is, the more prices fall.
And in order to keep all that milk from perishing, they turn it into cheese.
“They have huge, huge refrigerated warehouses where they store it in. It’s commercial cheese,” said Klein.
1.4 billion pounds to be exact of commercial American cheese that consumers don’t really want to eat either. So the more cheese that’s added to storage, the worse it is for dairy farmers.
“I remember when there were 150 dairy farms in Northampton County. We’re down to a dozen,” said Klein.
Source: wfmz.com
