U.S. dairy markets can be a challenge to completely understand. Mick Homb, the general manager for the Farm First Dairy Cooperative in Wisconsin, said even he’s not sure why the milk markets are doing what they’re doing.
“I wish I were smart enough to explain the milk markets. It seems like milk, right now, is a little bit tight, but it’s going to take somebody smarter than me to figure out why milk is tight and the milk prices are so low. Seventeen dollars for the foreseeable future, say, six months. It’s just not where the farmers need to be, and it’s certainly not where we would like things to be, because with the price and everything and cost, I just think it’s hard for anybody to make it, but let alone farmers who are not getting the price for their milk that I think they deserve.”
U.S. dairy farmers are incredibly efficient producers, which can make it hard to get good prices for their products and co-products.
“Correct, and that’s the one thing. When you put it in perspective of what all the rest of us do for a job, and they do for a job, it doesn’t make any sense that, if you get better at your job, you should make more money. And that just isn’t the way it is. All of our farmers, our components, in the last four or five years, butterfat, protein, other solids, and somatic cell have all, as the farmers have gotten better, but yet you’re still turning around, and we’re having the prices that we had 30–40 years ago. It makes no sense, and it’s hard to run their businesses or our businesses when you don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.”