So to summarize, milk is perishable, and another problem is with all the restaurants shut down or having limited business. I never considered it, but with all food, sales to restaurants are usually sold in bulk items which are now being consumed less. It would take packaging facilities reworking to produce more small bags of grated cheese when they were making and selling just as many 10 pound bags to the hotel restaurant industry ect. It might mean dairy farmers might have to re-purpose their livestock or cull them so they are not overproducing and making to much waste. Sucks that its not a complete lack of consumers but distribution logistics that is damaging the dairy industry.
This is terrible. I love milk. We have been buying the same amount as we always did, just more at once to limit the necessary trips to the store. I can see how that can have a negative effect though. Our food sector is not something we should be outsourcing or letting die, so if these folks need propped up with government money and subsidies and stimulus money to continue producing food here in America, so be it. That's nothing less than an investment in self-sufficiency. This is not something we leave to the market deity to sort out.
That's true, but for some it might be more realistic to re-purpose the cows, or cull do to the massive amount of spoilage they are making. Not sure what its does to manure in large quantities (possible good or very bad) but that's where the dairy farmer in the article was having to dump his.
Dumping milk isn’t anything new although it’s on the increase with C-19. We have a small dairy herd but use the cows mostly for nurse cows. But I have some acquaintances in the commercial dairy business. Last week one said she went to the store and they were limiting purchases to 1 gal. That morning their farm dumped a whole transport in the manure pit. FYI dairy manure ends up in a lagoon as slurry. Adding milk is just adding organic matter and water to the organic matter and water already in the lagoon. It will end up as fertilizer on a field that grows corn silage or alfalfa to feed the cows and the circle of life continues. The federal government has over-subsidized the dairy industry in my opinion. It’s great I guess if you like cheap dairy products but it results in overproduction and a lot of waste. I read the other day the federal government has purchased so much cheese to keep dairies going the last couple years they have enough in storage to build a bigger than life size replica of the capital building out of cheese.
