Brasher: Iowa Swirls At Core Of Dairy Pricing Tiff
US - When you think of Iowa agriculture, you think corn, hogs and now ethanol. Not milk cows. Arizona produces nearly as much milk as Iowa. Arizona!
16 April 2007
2 minute read
Packaged frozen novelties swirl on conveyor lines around Val Keleher and Susie Vaske at a Wells' Dairy plant in LeMars.
But Iowa has the Blue Bunny and a pair of well-placed Democratic lawmakers, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin and U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell.
Those lawmakers and the Iowa-based company that makes Blue Bunny ice cream are at the center of a dispute over whether corporate dairy processors should be allowed to buy milk under contracts that would pay farmers less than the minimum prices set by the federal milk marketing system. Farmer-owned cooperatives like Land O' Lakes have long been allowed to do that.
Producers who oppose contracting claim it would allow big processors to drive down milk prices and dominate milk production the way that vertically integrated meatpackers like Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods now dominate hog and chicken production.
"We have a hard time getting the true market value of our milk already. This is going to make it much, much worse," said Joaquin Contente, a dairy producer who is president of the California Farmers Union.
Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, has agreed to include the contracting authority in this year's farm bill.
Harkin "believes if it is done right, it can work. He also believes there is support for it on the committee," said spokeswoman Kate Cyrul.
