“Small dairy farms are rapidly disappearing.”
(dotted line shows years with missing data for U.S. dairy farms.”
Credit: USDA
– Editor’s note:
Support our local farmers by purchasing their products at the Yelm Farmers Market and Yelm Food Co-op.
– “Best advice to U.S. dairy farmers? ‘Sell out as fast as you can'”
“Small-dairy farmers are getting squeezed out by corporate agriculture. “That is not what America is about,” a struggling farmer said.”
“Kentucky dairy farmers and others nationwide forced to sell – cheese abundance drops prices, too,” by Phil McCausland, NBC News.
Read more
– “America has a cheese problem that’s only going to get worse”
Why so much? There are two main factors. Cheese is piling up due to a dwindling demand for milk, yet farmers are on target to produce a whopping 218.7 billion pounds of milk by December. On top of that, cheese, butter and milk powder store better than fluid milk, resulting in a surplus of cheddar and Swiss.
Extra cheese means lower prices, which spells trouble for farmers. The current price is at $15.36 per 100 pounds, which is a dollar below the average for 2017, according to The Washington Post.
President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and Mexico isn’t helping the situation,” by Allana Akhtar, MSN Money.
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