![]() ![]() ![]() Provincial milk boards exercise price-setting authority for all milk produced in their territory, but over the years prices have been largely harmonized among the provinces. Measures are in place to ensure that the provinces, producers and producer pools respect their allocated quotas. Under the Dominion's supply-management system, quotas for production of milk are determined and overseen by a Canadian Milk Supply Management Committee, created through a federal-provincial agreement.Ĭhantal Paul of the Canadian Dairy Commission said that demand is evaluated monthly, and the national quotas are adjusted accordingly. VermontBiz investigated several possible answers to that question, beginning with supply management, for which Canada furnishes a nearby reference point. So, given those persistent shortfalls, is there still a means of saving the mostly small dairy farms that have stood as something akin to Green Mountain State's trademark for so many generations? Supply Management: Maybe Yes, Maybe No Diane Bothfeld, AAFM's director of administrative services and dairy policy, told VermontBiz that, over the last five years, milk checks have "frequently" fallen short of defraying those costs. One extrapolation of federal statistics for 2020 - the most recent figures available - put the value of milk produced in Vermont at only 82% of production costs. But that spike in prices did nothing, of course, for the farmers who had given up when prices fell so far below production costs during the pandemic. By March of this year, the same average federal price had almost doubled, to $24.08, having climbed for seven months straight. The sector has nevertheless demonstrated some resiliency. ![]() In an interview for this article, Vermont Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets Anson Tebbetts said the pandemic "certainly played a significant role in the loss of some of our farms, because of the volatility in where the market was headed." In three months, the average price that Vermont's dairy farmers received for their product through the federal milk market system plummeted 27%, to $12.82 per hundredweight of raw milk, according to the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.Īmong other impacts, the price collapse forced the closing of Rutland's Thomas Dairy in September 2020, one of the few remaining local handlers selling fluid milk in the state. Thirty-eight farms - one or two a week - disappeared in the seven months between May and December 2020, following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which occasioned a major decline in demand as schools and restaurants shut down. By the first quarter of this year, the number stood at 564, a further decline of 29%. Five years later, there were 796 - 18% fewer. According to the state's Agency for Farms, Food and Markets, Vermont had 973 cow dairy farms in 2012. Hall, Vermont Business Magazine Each year, the people who study such things inform us that our state's dairy farms, so emblematic of what makes Vermont, Vermont, continue to dwindle in number. ![]()
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