Every industry has been impacted severely by the CoVid-19 pandemic and despite food manufacturers and farmers continuing to work hard, they too have been hit financially. None more so than those in the dairy industry.
Due to the closure of schools, who buy massive amounts of milk daily, and the closure of restaurants, the market for milk and other dairy products has considerably fallen. This has left many farmers with a glut of milk produce – they can’t stop milking cows after all. As unpasteurised milk can’t be stored for a very long time, this means many farmers are being forced to pour all the perfectly good milk away.
Orion Samuelson, an agro-business reporter for WGN Radio in Chicago spelled out the situation:
“Dairy farmers can’t keep the milk and so they’re dumping it because, they’ve invested so much money to produce it already, Money and labour and goods to get it done, that they can’t sell it … the biggest buyer of fluid milk in the United States is the National School Lunch Program. Those buyers just aren’t out there.”
A farm in Pennsylvania had a different plan. The Whoa Nellie Dairy run by Ben and Mary Beth Brown usually have their milk bought by a local milk distributor, who is no longer buying. Instead, the Browns begun pasteurising and bottling their own milk and selling it to stores and individuals directly. The five-hundred acre farm has been in the Brown’s family since the 1700s and they have over 200 cows, 70 of which produce milk.
The response from the local community was huge and they began buying up the Brown’s milk straight away. The family is working round the clock to preserve and bottle their produce and the queues stretch as far as the eye can see. Ben Brown said:
“I hate waste, and I don’t want to dump milk. People can use it, and I still have to pay my bills.”
Linda and Tom Goodin who have now become direct customers of the Whoa Nellie Dairy were all in praise of the program:
“I know their uncle, Larry Basinger, and we want to help the Brown family through this. We’re going to buy 10 gallons. I have orders from our whole family.”
The issues facing dairy producers is compounded by the fast supply chains in place at grocery stores, whereby the stores only hold enough refrigeration for a limited amount of milk – because normally, the milk is delivered and sold the same day.
The move by the Brown’s farm is a really great one, and we hope that other farms find ways to dispense of their product without having to waste it – which means consumers don’t get the products they always wanted, and the farm loses out on valuable income in these extremely tough economic times.
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