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Farmers Union taking dairy supply management & study nationwide

Farmers Union officials from Wisconsin are taking their push for dairy supply management nationwide.  Wisconsin President Darin Von Ruden tells Brownfield producers would have been better off if the supply management provisions of the old MPP program were not removed before the 2014 Farm Bill passed. “We’re currently looking at a study that Dr. Mark Stephenson from UW Madison and Dr. Chuck Nicholson from Cornell University are doing, looking at the effects would have been if the actual MPP program would have been adopted by Congress and not had any of the supply management mechanisms pulled out of there.”

Wisconsin Farmers Union brought Canadian producers to Wisconsin and Michigan last year, and Von Ruden says details of the study and last summer’s Dairying Together initiative will be expanded nationwide. Von Ruden says, “We’re looking at starting a road show on that at the end of March in the eastern United States, New York, Vermont area, and then moving west, hopefully getting all the way out to California before mid-summer.”

Von Ruden says he’s not sure if the supply management system they eventually support will be similar to Canada, where they have a high cost of entry and government-set quotas.  Government Relations Director Kara O’Conner tells Brownfield cooperative members should urge their co-op to look at a base excess program to manage the production locally.