Click here to subscribe today or Login.
By PAMELA C. TURFA pamt@leader.net
Thursday, January 27, 2000 Page: 7B
TUNKHANNOCK – Even before dairy farmer Arden Tewksbury opened the check he
received Wednesday for milk sold in December, he knew the price had dropped 40
percent from the price he received three months ago.
The latest price of $9.69 per hundredweight, the lowest since the late
1970s, is spurring Pennsylvania dairy farmers to take public action.
On Feb. 1, farmers in this state will join those in Wisconsin and New York
state in a picket of milk-producing plants.
Unless the federal government changes its milk-pricing formulas, the
average dairy farmer’s gross income will drop about $50,000 this year, said
Tewksbury, consultant manager of the Progressive Agriculture Organization, a
regional farmers’ association.
“We’re heading for a terrible situation. No, we’re not heading for it;
we’re here,” he said.
Tewksbury’s group is set to have a news conference today to discuss the
picketing and announce federal policy changes they are suggesting to U.S.
Reps. Paul Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke, and Don Sherwood, R-Tunkhannock, and U.S.
Sens. Rick Santorum, R-Pittsburgh, and Arlen Specter, R-Philadelphia.
“It is pretty shocking when you think that farmers have to leave their
farms and pick up picket signs,” said Brenda Cochran, whose family owns a
dairy farm near Westfield in Tioga County.
The price paid to dairy farmers is based on the wholesale price of cheese.
Recently cheese prices dropped more than 40 percent.
Meanwhile, milk prices paid by consumers have dropped slightly – but not by
as much as the prices paid to farmers.
In November, milk sold for $2.75 per gallon. Last month, the price dropped
to $2.27, and this month it went back up to $2.37.
“Consumers tell me over and over again they will pay $2.75 or more if they
know it’s going to the farmers,” Tewksbury said.
Farmers say they have pleaded unsuccessfully with the federal government to
base prices on the cost of producing milk, not the price of cheese.
Those milk MD112production costs are escalating. Higher oil prices have
gone up sharply this month. Home heating oil rose from $1.10 to $1.58 per
gallon and diesel fuel is now almost $2 per gallon.
The Feb. 1 picketing is the first activity under the national Ag Action
2000 initiative, created by farmers’ groups to highlight what they say is a
national agricultural crisis.
“Everything we undertake is legal and peaceful,” Cochran said.
Tewksbury said farmers regionally will consider other actions. He would not
rule out milk dumping to protest the lower prices.
“We’re going to consider anything that will get the attention of the
people.”
Call Turfa at 829-7177.