Dairies dumping milk

I talked to a Mennonite today that's said their dairies are dumping milk because they can't sell it supposedly the people that they sell to , the bottlers can't get the plastic pellets to make the bottles because they come from China .

the official story is that somehow people are eating less cheese

They should use glass bottles that are USA or Canadian made. My brother sells glass bottles.

No school, no milk for lunch.

Yes, we need to start making more here, like it used to be.

Nittany, Schools are still distributing milk and meals to kids. Parents or other caretakers pick those meals up outside the school

Wonder if dairies could do that? Bring your containers and take some milk home.

We used to get milk in waxed paper cartons. This country has the ability to produce A LOT of paper.

They did that here for about a week, but stopped doing it.

Many moons ago used to ride along with milkman on his route delivering reusable glass bottles. Got an education fast on those rides. First time I learned the term" built like a brick s---house"

Do most dairies that aren't large ag farms have pasteurization equipment, if not nope. You'd get hanged in many states selling raw milk.

This has been going on since before this crisis my dad has been getting paid to dump trailer loads of milk in his manure pit for months

Wife just picked up 3 gallons for $9 I’m a happy camper.

I still get mine in glass bottles

Just to clarify, it's not the farmers that are dumping the milk, it's the milk company dumping it.

That's crazy!

Certain states allow cow shares. People buy a part of a dairy cow and then pickup milk whenever they want. I believe California and Pennsylvania allow dairy farms to sell raw milk but they have to have really good quality milk. If someone wants to argue I don't care, I am just stating my understanding of how I think it works. I have bought raw milk in Pennsylvania. You Pennsylvania people are lucky.

WVa was trying for cow share a while back but haven't heard much likely

Overproduction means dumping(not dumping into the market which drives the prices down).It is a way to keep prices stable.

Growing up, we'd go to a place called the Dairy Barn. It was a large dairy farmer who had a pasteurizer and bottles.

We'd get 4 gallon at a time, hand back old bottles and get filled ones. Doubt that'd be legal in today's world.

Slightly off topic , but can someone from SC or FL tell me why this is the price I saw in those 2 states just a few months ago ?


Picture was taken December 26th 2019

Our area will be having a Webinar on this as quickly as it can be setup and proper promotion. We have large dairies in a neighboring county that have been asked to land spread milk. There will be issues with putting a very liquid high energy and easily degradable product on the landscape so many acres will not be available. The six month milk futures have dropped from 2-4 dollars per CWT in the last 3-5 weeks. Many stores had huge runs on fluid milk and some are short but the major markets like cheese, butter, and exports are basically gone at this time.

Bryce

X2

Bryce - Have cheese prices dropped? I would gladly load and drive over for a couple hundred pounds of cheese. To me, milk and cheese are essentials.........

You can buy raw milk from dairy farms here in OK... But dairy farmers are forbidden to advertise milk for sale.

Mike

In years past, I know of a grazing dairy in Ohio that mixed high somatic cell milk with water and sprayed the pasture.

I don't know any wholesalers that may have larger blocks like 5 lbs. or even 40 lbs. that probably could be bought at lower prices, but if you would start Googling some sites you may find some. The whole idea of dumping the milk is to help keep prices up as no major cheese producers wants their huge inventories devalued to the point where they can not use the inventory as leverage for borrowing working and operating funds.
As in most other cases there will quickly be law suits out trying to prevent the dumping as some will say it s a way of price fixing, but with schools out that is what is really hurting the dairy sales, as are the restaurants doing far less business. Most of the butter use in the US is in the restaurant business and there are not nearly as many pizzas being eaten today as there were two months ago. In the USA the average per person cheese consumption is 36 lbs. per year. We will see that go way, way down. The emergency payments from the feds the last couple years were for soybeans and corn for the most part, pork, beef and dairy will be hurting for some time. The other issue is that in about 3-4 months most households won't have the income to buy even lower cost beef and dairy.

I would hope that the federal government would look at some of the other items then just money. It takes weeks to months to distribute funds. Food can be at the door steps in hours and days.
Bryce

Like Mike said it can be done here in Oklahoma. We buy milk from a small dairy not far from home. They do have pasteurization equipment but you can get it raw straight out of the teet if you want. My dad and uncle and grandpa hauled milk to our local cheese factory until they closed it down. I grew up on raw milk and homemade butter!

Good post Bryce. I'd much rather see cheese and milk from the government than checks. You know where a lot of the checks are going to be spent, and it won't be food.

Most people wouldn’t know what to do with that much cheese, they’re having trouble figuring out how to have meals without packaged chips.

Milk here today is over $4.00/gal

Bring on the gubermint CHEESE!! sure bet to be re elected... man i loved regan :}

I find it interesting because its hard to find milk in the store

Yes there is a huge disconnect between total milk produced, total demand and shortages. Many state that there are gallon limits or two gallon limits on milk purchases around here and yes there has been a big increase in fluid milk sales this last month in stores, but that does not begin to cover the huge losses in usage or consumption in the major areas of food consumption and exports. The school food system utilizes huge amounts of many commodities as do many institutions. Also we have to remember that in many areas institutions like hospitals are way down in total patients or visits as most elective surgeries and other visits are discontinued. Many of the patients in many areas are critically ill and won't be eating anything like a normal meal if they eat at all. Dumping milk is probably the best way to cut production when not needed without having farmers cull cows which they need for collateral and also to produce milk when there is a better market. The one thing many producers can do is to dry off some cows early if they can manage longer dry periods well or cut the energy and protein in their rations and have the cows produce less milk. This is quite easy to do but will probably lower profitability or more accurately increase losses already occurring.

Bryce

Some updates on milk dumping in the USA. There will continue to be milk dumping in many areas for 2-4 weeks from what I have found out. The issue is not really over production related as much as the supply chain issue. Many processing facilities have been setup for decades to package milk and dairy products for institutions, schools, hospitals, military and mostly restaurants. The containers or packaging for this major portion of dairy products is not the same as that that goes to retail outlets where most of the dairy is being purchased today. It takes time to re-tool the processing. Also you may remember that two very major fluid milk companies, Deans Foods and Borden's filed for bankruptcy protection a few months ago. They had out of date production facilities and were the leaders in supply fluid milk to retailers for the last decades and that portion of dairy sales has dwindled steadily for decades. Around our area they are asking some of the larger dairies to dump for a certain number of days and then another larger dairy. By selecting larger dairies they can remove a lot of milk with fewer operations and they can spread the losses over more of the dairies so not just a few dump all of their milk for several days or weeks. Another thing that slows the distribution phase is that some workers are not working due to illness etc. and several firms will find it difficult to make major changes in processing and also for a limited period of time. This is short term and one will probably see rationing of fluid milk until this goes away. We no that many schools nationwide will not reopen until the fall if then so that does mean that there is some time frames that will work for processors to change packaging and distribution. To date we have had very little virus outbreaks in the major dairy producing regions of the USA. Virus could well be a game changer if it hits the dairy workforce. The concern about getting the virus is much more likely in our modern dairy industry than in the past. The bulk of dairy workers no longer live in the country. They don't live in large cities but they live in cities of 10-100,000 in WI because there is very little housing available in the rural areas and thus less social distancing.

Bryce

Fake news.
I eat twice as much cheese as anyone else and my toilet paper will last 7 times as long. 3 sheets and I'm back in the saddle just dont trip on rabbit pellets you could twist her dam ankle I'm telling ya.

I'm drinking milk as I type. Washing down peanut butter stuffed pretzels. We are overweight as a nation. One reasons is preservatives in our food and a big one is sugar. One cup of milk has half the daily recommended amount of sugar in it. Milk has been pushed for years in our society for one reason or another, but really isn't needed in our diet. You can get all the minerals that milk has from vegetables and not have the preservatives, sugar, or hormones either. Just saying. Cows milk is meant for baby cows.

The farmer still gets paid, even if the milk is dumped. So changing which dairies dump isn't spreading out the loss.

There are a whole host of other aspects to a CWT of milk than just price or sales.

Bryce