USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service released their final decision on the federal milk marketing orders last week, and some groups are satisfied with what farmers and their cooperatives will vote on.

The Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association is pleased with USDA’s changes between last spring’s proposed rule and the new final rule regarding make allowances.  The final rule removes California data from 2016 and raises the make allowance deduction from farmers’ milk checks from $0.2268 to $0.2393 per pound.  USDA also added back the $0.0015 marketing allowance to all four dairy product make allowances, having removed them in the Proposed Rule.

That means if farmers approve the new federal orders to guarantee things like timely payments to farmers and third-party component testing, they will have to live with about thirty-eight cents per pound in deductions from their milk checks.  For many including American Farm Bureau Federation, that’s a bitter pill to swallow without mandatory cost of production surveys to justify higher make allowances.  USDA tells Brownfield it doesn’t have the authority to require processors to participate in a mandatory survey.

Farm First Dairy Cooperative Board President John Rettler says, “Much of what FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative advocated for in Federal Milk Marketing Order reform over the past three years is reflected in USDA’s final decision.”  He says USDA’s final version included many of the National Milk Producer Federation’s key concepts that FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative advocated for.

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