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Dairy farmers

LA PLUME – Standing amid plates of American cheese, pages of price calculations and a crate of chocolate-milk cartons, a few regional dairy farmers met in a parking lot along U.S. Route 6 on Wednesday to call for an increase in milk prices, and almost everything about the scene spoke to their desperation.

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Ed Jonas, a dairy farmer from Wayne County, listens as farmers gathered in La Plume describe the economic factors – rising prices and stifled profits – that are shaving their already slim bottom line.

Clark Van Orden/The Times Leader

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“A lot of farmers aren’t here today because they can’t be here,” explained Ed Jonas of Cold Springs Farm in Wayne County. “I’m here because I have two sons.”

Brian Smith, a dairy farmer and Wayne County commissioner, was more confrontational. “Farmers have been beaten up and discouraged for so long that they look at farm meetings as, ‘It’s just another meeting,’” he said. “We live two hours from the biggest milk-consumer market in the world and we’re suffering. … It doesn’t make sense.”

According to the farmers, their breed is fighting a losing battle in which they’re powerless to succeed and yet too proud to surrender their “way of life,” Smith said. Even worse, they say, is society’s indifference. “Farmers are being driven to the point of going out of business, and the consumer isn’t aware of it,” Smith said, noting the at-times noisy intersection was the only place they could find to raise awareness.

While Smith called for an audit of the industry to find out how consumers’ dollars are divvied up before they get to the producer, fellow farmer Arden Tewksbury of Meshoppen announced the group’s support for a bill proposed by U.S. Sens. Bob Casey Jr., D-Scranton, and Arlen Specter, R-Philadelphia.

The bill, which must be reintroduced, would force the Secretary of Agriculture to set milk price annually based on a formula that includes estimated supply and consumption. This, Tewksbury said, would eliminate price manipulations at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that allow consumer prices to remain high while suppressing commodity prices.

“We’re the only production in this country that can’t name their price,” said Joe Davitt, who has spent his entire 70 years at his farm near Honesdale. With added costs like surcharges that were added when fuel prices rose, dairy producers’ profit margins continue to shrink, he said, and the extra charges remain even after, in the case of fuel, their prices drop. “The dairy farmer has no leverage at all. If you don’t like it, they don’t take your milk,” he said.

“You’re lucky if you don’t get a bill when you send a veal calf” to slaughter, said Martha Kupscznk, even though veal is one of the more expensive cuts of meat.

“Without a profit,” Smith warned, “you go belly up, and that’s what’s going to happen to the food supply. … Farmers aren’t saying that people shouldn’t make money. There should be a profit margin all along the way.”

Rory Sweeney, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7418.