The American Dairy Coalition sent a letter to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack asking him to deny two recent petitions for hearings on the Federal Milk Marketing Order.
The petitions from processor groups ask USDA to increase payments from farmers to processors to offset higher input costs.
The coalition says holding a federal milk pricing hearing on these “make-allowances” without looking into additional concerns facing dairy farmers is misaligned, and therefore ADC can’t support it.
“As a grassroots dairy farmer organization, ADC believes a comprehensive FMMO hearing is needed,” says ADC CEO Laurie Fischer.
“We do not support ‘make allowance’ updates based on processors having the ability to voluntarily participate in the cost surveys, which undoubtedly would exclude essential relevant data.”
ADC also says farmers need transparency in order to understand how their net payment is calculated, and these make allowances are not line items, but they’re embedded in pricing formulas.
