Small dairy farmers in the Northeast and Wisconsin say a tough year has been made worse by Congress' failure to pass a new farm bill before the old one expired.
While many farm programs have continued through the harvest season even though the farm bill expired Sept. 30, a program that pays dairy farmers when milk prices plummet has ended.
Many dairy farms were already struggling with low milk prices and high fuel and feed costs as the worst drought in decades dried up grazing land and pushed up the price of hay and feed. Dozens in states like California, the nation's leading milk producer, have filed for bankruptcy.
In Vermont, which saw more closings this year after gradually losing farms for decades, the end of the milk income loss contract, or MILC, program, which paid dairy farmers when milk prices fell below a certain level, has created another wave of panic.
"The last couple of months, that's what's been keeping us going," said Myles Goodrich, who runs Molly Brook Farm in West Danville after taking over from his parents. "Otherwise, it'd be losing battle."
A milk glut sent prices tumbling below the cost of production this summer. They have since rebounded as farmers sold off cows and cut production. But hay and grain prices skyrocketed at the same time as demand for feed increased, all at the same time the drought cut into production.
Now is the time when producers need the MILC payment or something akin to that to allow them to get through this very difficult time, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
"Of all the producers that have been negatively impacted by the drought, the dairy producers are probably in the most difficult situation at this point in time," he said. "Livestock producers have suffered but their prices are reasonably high and the hope is that when the food, farm and jobs bill gets passed that that disaster program will be reinstated and they'll get some help and assistance. Dairy producers have no such assurance."
Goodrich's last MILC check for about $2,300 came in just as the farm received another 16-ton shipment of grain. The farm has been spending about $4,000 more on feed each month â€" $16,000 compared to about $12,000 last year â€" for 120 milking cows and other heifers and bulls.
"The milk price is good, but expenses are terrible," Goodrich said.
He figures he'll have to borrow to stay afloat, and Goodrich's mother, Sally, 84, said they're still paying off debt from when milk prices fell in 2009.
MILC paid $346 million to dairy farmers from October 2011 to September of this year. Of that, $75 million went to farmers in Wisconsin, $34 million to New York, $30 million to Pennsylvania and $9 million to farmers in Vermont.
While all dairy farms are eligible for the aid, the program includes a cap on the amount produced, so farms with more than 150 cows maxed out earlier in the year. Smaller farms, like those more often seen in Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, were still getting monthly payments when the program ended. They are the ones who are feeling the loss now.
Dick Gorder, vice president of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, said some farms in parts of southern Wisconsin that usually grow all their own feed couldn't in the drought and now have to buy feed, at double the cost of three years ago.
Gorder's neighbor in Mineral Point, Wis., bought all of his feed and once the bill was due he realized he couldn't make ends meet.
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