USDA Proposes Changes to Federal Milk Marketing Order

With California Ag Today, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

The USDA held a 49-day Federal Milk Marketing Order hearing late last year and into early 2024 and listened to hundreds of hours of testimony, which resulted in reform proposals released this week. Roger Cryan, chief economist with the American Farm Bureau, says the changes have some positives. Of note, he says it increases the value returned to farmers for bottling milk through increases in the location values and some formula adjustments, but most important, it restores the higher of the cheese or butter powder values in the bottling milk price instead of the average plus price formula that was used since 2019.

But, as you can imagine, there were also items that caused pause. A comment period is open on the final rule, and Cryan said Farm Bureau will be submitting a number of ideas…

“Those will be due probably by the middle of September. The USDA will put out a rule probably in the middle of November, and that'll be voted on by producers and co-ops. In the meantime, farmers can call their members of Congress to get a new farm bill as soon as possible, because every version of the Farm Bill that we've seen includes an audited mandatory survey of processors costs, and that data could help us get these make-allowances straight, and hopefully get some of that money back to farmers.”

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