Milk Demand Falls, cries US Dairy Farmers and Cooperatives

United States Dairy Industry practitioners and cooperative farmers have cried out on the drastic fall in demand for milk and milk products in the country.

Milk farmers showed concerns over the reduction in milk prices meanwhile some dairy cooperatives are dumping the product to avoid excess supply.

This move comes after the closing of restaurants and schools in the US.  With US cows now entering their productive phase in the year now, the presence of the COVID-19 is significantly reducing the source of demands. Earlier this year because of the pandemic, some dumping occurred during spring in the US.

“There’s no way to offset how much loss we’re seeing with school closings and food-service demand in the form of cheese and butter, just because someone’s buying an extra gallon of milk,” said Alyssa Badger, the director of operations at HighGround Dairy Chicago.

Many American dairy farmers have in years suffer low prices of milk,  and lot of exiting from the market  as  Wisconsin was  losing two-three dairy farms a day in the past three years. However at this time, when the milk industry ought to be recovering, it is now faced with the Corona virus pandemic.

Amidst this, Wisconsin dairy farmer, Wayne Gajewski has not dumped milk supplies rather he continues to supply to local markets though prices have fallen below his cost of production.  Gajewski, who has about 80 dairy cows expressed concerns about the supply chain breaking down.   He does hope the federal government can buy to at least share with those in need.

Initially, demands for dairy product skyrocketed due to panic buying; however, grocers including Walmart temporarily restricted how many dairy products shoppers can purchase. In addition, orders got cancelled as eateries shut down or shifted to deliveries.

These happenings are pointers that farmers urgently need help, said the communications director of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Grace Atherton.  In response to the fallout from COVID-19 crisis, there is a federal aid package of 9.5 billion dollars in assistance to farmers, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture.