Farm Aid Dairy Crisis Activities since January 2009

Farm Aid has been working on helping family farmers during the dairy crisis since the beginning of the year, when our farmer hotline began ringing off the hook with calls from dairy farmers. The first six months of 2009 saw a 500% increase in calls to the hotline over the previous year—most of which can be attributed to the dairy crisis. Below is a timeline highlighting our activities as we try to assist farmers through this crisis.

9/11/09 – Farm Aid provided a $3,000 emergency grant to the Harvest of Hope Fund in Wisconsin to assist struggling dairy farmers.

8/27/09 – Farm Aid provided funding to help support a grassroots dairy rally held in Wooster, Ohio.

8/26/09 – Farm Aid Communication Director, Jen Fahy, applauded Senators Feingold and Gillibrand for pushing the USDA to raise the floor price for milk and Senator Bernie Sanders for addressing the issues of imports and price manipulation. [Link]

7/14/09 – Farm Aid, along with 57 family farm, public health, environmental and consumer organizations, delivered a letter to Congress urging both the House and Senate to support the Secretary of Agriculture in any efforts to establish an emergency floor price for farm milk that reflects the cost of production. [PDF Link]

7/14/09 – Farm Aid Program Director, Hilde Steffey, participated in a national press teleconference held to highlight the failure of the House Agriculture Subcommittee's hearing on the dairy crisis to spotlight the voices of family dairy farmers instead of relying on corporate processors and giant dairy cooperatives. Hilde stressed the need for an emergency floor price for farm milk, an investigation into price gouging, a complete overhaul of milk pricing, and import regulation. [Link]

6/25/09 – Farm Aid's Executive Director, Carolyn Mugar, spoke about the ongoing dairy crisis at a book event honoring family farmers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [Link]

5/30/09 – Farm Aid teamed up with dairy farmers from eight states and a variety of local and regional organizations to hold a rally to raise awareness about unfair dairy prices at the Manchester Livestock Exchange in Manchester, Iowa. Farm Aid Hotline and Resource Network Coordinator, Joel Morton, spoke at the event, as did Farm Aid Board President, Willie Nelson, who called via cell phone to address the crowd. [Link]

5/28/09 – Farm Aid provided $10,000 in program grants to the National Family Farm Coalition (Washington, DC) and Family Farm Defenders (Madison, WI) to support these organizations' ongoing work to address the dairy crisis.

5/18/09 – Farm Aid issued a press release that details the state of the dairy crisis and expressed concern about the correlation between Dean Foods' profit and the demise of conventional dairy farmers. [Link]

4/14/09 – Farm Aid Board President, Willie Nelson, sent a statement of support to family dairy farmers rallying around milk prices in Des Moines, Iowa. [Link]

3/12/09 – Farm Aid Communications Director, Jen Fahy, writes about the threats of milk protein concentrates (MPCs) to family dairy farmers in the United States. [Link]

2/2009 – Farm Aid Program Director, Hilde Steffey, featured the root causes of the dairy crisis including price manipulation and unregulated imports in the February "Ask Hilde" online column. Hilde also explained why the consumer price for milk had remained largely the same despite plummeting farm gate prices for milk. [Link]