Processing facilities in the area haven’t been able to keep up with the supply.
Farmers in the Midwest have been pouring out thousands of gallons of milk as processing facilities in the area haven’t been able to keep up with the supply.
Ag Web Farm Journal reported earlier this month that many of the area’s processing facilities were already operating at capacity when Hastings Creamery, a local farmer-owned dairy manufacturing company, had to shut down its operations. The creamery reportedly processes 150,000 pounds of raw milk every day from farms around Minnesota and Wisconsin.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Council, a regional organization dealing with policy making and planning, told The Messenger that it recently alerted Hastings of seven violations with its industrial wastewater permit.
The council suspended the creamery’s ability to discharge industrial waste for treatment at the Hastings Wastewater Treatment Plant for at lest 30 days. According to the council, its waste would put the local wastewater treatment plant in danger and compromise the health and safety of the community.
“We’re working with Met Council on short-term solutions,” dairy farmer and Hastings part-owner Justin Malone told WCCO News. “We’re kinda sticking to the long-term solution, but it will take probably a year and a half to fully implement that.”
In the meantime, dairy farmers still have to milk their cows twice daily, CNN reported, and can’t stop production. The temporary solution has become to dump out the milk entirely.
“We’re shipping around 70,000 lbs. of milk a day, so I worry where’s all that milk going to go,” Mitch Thompson, owner of Thompson Family Dairy in Lewiston, Minnesota, told Ag Web. “If they keep dumping the milk, how bad is our [milk] price going to get?”
Thompson said that in early June, when his farm’s milk was picked up, he was told that the product would be taken to another farm nearby to spill it in their field.
He told Ag Web that he’s concerned the dumping will lead to lower milk prices, which would hurt dairy farmers’ bottom line.
WCCO reported that some dairy farmers have sold some of their cows to lessen production during this time.
For now, Hastings Creamery is reportedly trying to find other facilities for farmers to process their milk supply, but many in the area are already at capacity.
“The Metropolitan Council did not immediately respond to The Messenger’s request for comment on when Hastings Creamery farmers would stop having to reroute their milk.
The Metropolitan Council representative told The Messenger that it’s working with the creamery, the city, and Minnesota Department of Agriculture to find a solution. “Currently the creamery is hauling wastewater to the Metro Plant in Saint Paul,” the representative said.
Dairy farmer and Hastings part-owner Justin Malone said on Monday that it’s back to “business as usual” at the facility.
“We’ve been working over the past few weeks with the farmers to find alternative markets while government officials have been looking to find a solution to keep the plant open,” Sjostrom told Ag Web. “We believe every milk buyer across the Upper Midwest is aware of the situation. Plants are already voluntarily dumping milk on-farm on certain days and even though we have transportation available, most plants cannot currently take the milk even for free.”
Representatives from Hastings Creamery didn’t immediately respond to The Messenger’s request for comment.
