Dairy advocate says Congress won’t act

Sights set on Farm Bill 2012

By TOM KANE

MESHOPPEN, PA — Dairy farmer activist Arden Tewksbury has conceded that nothing will be done in this session of Congress to relieve the plight of dairy farmers.

“It’s going to mean that several hundreds or thousands of dairy farms will close down,” Tewksbury said. Tewksbury is the president of the Progressive Agriculture Organization (Pro Ag).

It pains him, but he is now focused on 2012 when the new Farm Bill will pass through Congress.

Indifference by members of Congress to the dairy farmers’ financial crises was the conclusion Tewksbury reached after talking to Congressmen Joe Sestak (D-PA), Pete Welch (D-VT) and Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Senators Robert Casey (D-PA), Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Tewksbury has been campaigning for the Casey-Specter Federal Milk Marketing Improvement Act (S-1645) for the last year and a half to no effect. He said that Congressman Chris Carney has promised to create a similar bill in the House next year.

“It is their strong belief that Congress will not intervene on behalf of dairy farmers at all this year,” Tewksbury said. “Nothing will be done for dairy farmers who are still suffering from nearly two straight years of abysmally low milk prices, all because of a bad federal milk pricing system that has been in place since the Federal Order Reform was passed by Congress in 2000.”

Tewksbury accused Congress and the Obama Administration of ignoring the fact that dairy farmers received an estimated $15 billion below their costs of producing milk in 2009.

All dairy farmer supporters must come together and develop proper language for next year’s Farm Bill that will implement not only a supply management program but also a new pricing formula that will cover the dairy farmers’ cost of production, among other things, he said.

A supply management system would set production quotas for each dairy farm. If a farmer does not maintain that quota, a fine would be imposed and placed in a pool. The pool would be used to reimburse farmers who kept to the quota but lost money.

“It is not true when people say we cannot solve the dairy farmers’ problems,” Tewksbury said. “We all believe very strongly that the Specter-Casey Bill could solve the financial problems facing the majority of dairy farmers across the United States,” he said.

What is needed is for all farmers and their supporters to get behind the Specter-Casey Bill. Tewsbury bemoaned the fact that many dairy farmers are not militant enough because their energy is spent on the daunting task of milk production every day, all day. He also bemoans the fact that farmers falsely believe that the special interest milk companies speak for them in Washington, much to the dairy farmers’ disadvantage.

Pro Ag can be reached at progressiveagricultureorg@gmail.com or by calling 570/833-5776.