Question for the dairy guys

What is the price where the M.I.L.C. payment kicks in? I see where Class 3 is around $21,yet Vilsac and Stabemall are on TV all over the place just going insane about how dairy farmers are gonna die because the house didn't pass the farm bill. Is it kicking in at anything under $25 or is this just a load of election year manure?
When I sold the cows 9 years ago,seems like it was somewhere around $12.50-13.

Does either version of the farm bill even continue milc anyway?

No farm bill = no milc payments.

But the milc payments kicked in when the market price got below a certain level. What's that level?

Or did it turn in to what food stamps did? When that started,you had to buy them and you saved a percentage,but somehow it became a right to free food. Does everybody get the milc payment now regardless of market price? I can feel my blood starting to boil if that's how it works now.

while there is a feed cost adjuster in the program now which floats the payment target, there is no payment projected for september milk onward due to futures price. politicians= natural fertilizer. if you want to start milking again i might just send the old girls down to you. -john-

It's been revised over time now, not only milk price determines it but also feed price. So now even if the price of milk seemed relatively high there still may be a milc payment because of $8 corn and $16 beans. I don't pretend to fully understand any of it.

If the farm bill is not done before the end of the year then it will revert to a 1940s bill. That bill supported milk at parity price. I think that is about $40 a hundred weight. So the milk guys should be praying they DON"T pass a bill.

The farm payments are not the issue holding the farm bill up. It is the food stamp program exploding in size.

Wife came home from the store the other day madder than H. She had followed this woman in the check out line. The woman paid for a whole cart full of junk food,pop,deli prepared food, etc. with a SNAP card(food stamps). My wife happened to be parked close to where the woman's vehicle was. It was a 2013 Cadillac Escalade with thirty day tags on it. My wife asked her about the car. The woman was all proud that they had just bought it for $65,000.

So they could buy a $65,000 car but my tax dollars where paying for their junk food. The hear the politicians talk the poor down trodden are just scraping by and we all should feel sorry for those on food stamps. That is BS.

I say cut out the farm payments. We have record high grain prices. The cattle guys never get any payment so what makes the dairy guys so special??? The 800-1200 head dairies I haul feed to sure seem to have plenty of money to buy fancy new equipment.

Then cut out all food stamps and free school lunches. When I was in school the poor kids worked in the school to pay for their meal. Some in the kitchen and some helped clean the school. Never hurt them one bit. Every hear of packing their lunch from home??? I never had a school lunch at school. My mother said it cost too much and we carried a brown paper bag with lunch in it. Drank a white milk for a nickle. Then you folded the bag up and took it back home. I usually could get a week or two out of the same bag.

Then the real poor should have coupons for certain kinds of food. Like a sack of potatoes. A pound of hamburger. Etc. Not this card that they can buy anything with. Also stop Connivance stores form being able to accept Snap cards. They just have junk food at high prices.

I have ZERO problem helping those that really need help. I just don't think we have 47 million people needing help to buy their food.

The bill boards that say we have starving kids and such here in the US are BS too. The last time I checked the biggest health issue was how too many of us are OBESE not starved.

We all need to quit looking to the government to help us do anything. The government never does anything very well and whatever it does always cost more than if we had done it ourselves.

Vote for JD for President!

The price is $18.50/hundred weight where I am. Everyone who qualifies gets a MILC payment, if they earn below a certain gross revenue amount per year which I think is $1 million.

As far as MILC and the farm bill; whether the farm bill passes or not MILC is dead, done, gone. It is being replaced by a RMA program where you purchase insurance on a monthly basis based on yours lbs. shipped and expected price. There will be no revert to the 1940's farm bill price.

Since you know so much then you should know that the 1000-1200 is way over the cap and doesnt get jack squat from the milc program.

Complicated doesn't being to explain the formula for it! A few years ago it was around $16.50 per/cwt for a MILC payment due to lower feed prices.

USDA published the final MILC payment rate for August. No MILC payment is projected for September due to the Class I Base Price being $17.54, well above the $13.69 MILC base Class I price and the Base Ration Value (commonly called the feed cost adjuster) in the formula increasing from $7.35 to $9.50.
Just do a google search, I just found this!

And next she'll need health care, from all the years of junk food, who in their right mind pays that much for a vehicle, I can see a person earning something nice, but if you have to pay for groceries with food stamps, all across the board from things like this to all the various crime you can read about on a daily basis, we have a whole new breed of stupidity out there.

Then if the large dairies can make a profit why can't the smaller guys???? I am all for any farmer making a living but don't try to farm like you did fifty years agoan then whine to me you are not making any money. You need to change/adapt to the current business climate to survive long term. If the government payments are all that is keeping you in business then you need to look at changing something.

I just read where this women in CA was going to have to sell out her herd or file bankruptcy. She was 82 years old and had been on all kinds of dairy boards and such. One of the first women in the large dairy business. She was several million in debt. She said she was loosing $40,000 each month and had been for several years. Well one of those boards should have been in a basic financial class. If you are loosing 40K each month and keep doing so for several years then you are INSANE!!! One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over an expecting a different out come.

We can't turn certain farms into welfare projects for the government. That is not good for any of us. The cost will be much higher and production will not match demand. So we will either have too much or not enough. It will not balance out.

Supply and demand works very well to keep things where they need to be. IF feed costs are too high then people need to cut back on the feed or switch to cheaper sources. That way the high cost feed will come down in price when demand falls. Also the high price will encourage production of that feed.

The dairies that are hurting where rolling in money several years ago when milk was $20. Then they where loosing money before that when it was $13 dollars. The income stream has been a roller coaster for them the last ten years or so. So it is like many types of farming today. You have to have capitol saved back to survive the lean times.

It sucks that some farms are going to go broke this year because of high feed cost. I don't have a better system. I do not want the government involved picking winners and losers. That will never work long term either.

Well put! I remember the brown bag days to and I'm only 38. I really can't remember what the white milk cost back in the early 80s, but I remember the janitor, I think it was,going from class room to classroom pushing a hand truck full of milk creates, we left the change on our desk and he'd give us a little carton of milk. Can't imagine schools do that anymore!??

There's no magic size for a dairy farm to be profitable. It all depends on the things that can't be taught, common sense and work ethic. I'm a dairy/cash crop operation and I've received many times more ldp and dcp's than any dairy program.

No way in h3ll !! The wife told me when I sold them that if I ever started again,she would divorce me. She wouldn't have to do that and settle for half. I'd do myself in if I had to do that again and she could have it all.

Milk might adjust to 40 dollars /cwt but that does not mean demand will stay constant. People can laugh but I believe there is such a thing as pricing ourselves out of the market. I look at the consumer habits of the people I know that are not in agriculture and see it is very possible to alter demand characteristics and very likely on a long term basis. A lot of people today do not live like a couple of generations ago where they have to have meat and milk on a daily basis. There are not the pro-agriculture politicians in Washington like years ago and those wishing that the government getting out of the business of production agriculture may get their wish. But like the old saying goes "Careful of what you wish for because you might just get it." I think even the staunchest conservatives here were taking USDA payments back in the dark days of the 1980's. I remember the philosophy expounded back in college was that if the government got out of production agriculture with no farm bill or USDA that effect would reduce land values by a third. Good if you are young looking to buy land but bad if you are close to retirement or inflated land values are keeping your balance sheet healthy.

Thanks,that's all I wanted to know. Glad you guys aren't going to die like a few in politics claim you are.

Just curious to know if you take any of the farm payments in your operation?

AH yes,I always took a nickle in my hand-me-down Mickey Mouse lunch box that my older sister had.

As far as the $40-50 milk by law killing demand,sure it will,but it'll still be the law. The government will just have to buy and store hard product like they used to.

I'll be the first to tell you that I collected MILC whenever the price fell down to where I could for the last few years that I milked cows,but that was way after the years when I really needed it. By that time the wife had a college education and had a good job and the kids were grown. Where was it that year in the 80s when my kids went to school til the middle of December without coats because we couldn't even afford to pay the light bill and buy groceries in the same month? When they finally did get coats,they were way too big and had the MMPA logo on them because the only way we could afford them was to get them through Michigan Milk Producers Member Merchandise on a milk check deduction.

Just pizzes me off that these certain politicians are making claims about loosing MILC because of their opponents when there wasn't one being paid anyway and won't be in either version of the new farm bill. And any of you who might be current members of MMPA have to be so dammed proud that Ken Nobis,current president of MMPA,is making campaign re election commercials for Stabemall.

I take ZERO direct farm payments. I do acreage reports for the yields information. I DO NOT even take the cost share for conservation projects. I do not want UNCLE SAM owning me. The guys that have taken conservation project money now have to have complete farm manure management plans even if they are under the required EPA head number. Not for me. I don't pollute but I don't want some yahoo in Washington telling me I can't put manure here or there because he does not like it.

I guess I do get indirect farm subsidies through my crop insurance rates. Even they are not much as I have only had two claims in thirty years against my crop insurance. Even then the one year the premium I paid was more than the claim. The other year was 1988. I did draw that year but if you add up the premium payment since then I have paid just about four times what I drew.

I will not even be close to a claim this year. Beans averaged 64 bushels per acre. The corn seems like it will average out at the 150-160 range.

I would like the US government out of it completely. If the land values fell some then we would adjust and get along. The government payments are not for the farmer. It is to keep the main food stuffs in abundant/cheap supply. Around here some of the big grain guys where getting big payments the last two years. We have had record prices but they where still drawing on some 2008 program. It is all just a racket. I say end it. I have made it without the payments so others should be able too. Maybe you would not be able to farm three counties of ground and not be diversified.

I have always had livestock, grain, and hay. Plus I worked in town and at my home shop. One of the things usually made up for a shortage if one of the others was not doing well. If more where still doing it this way we would have more farmers.

If you put all of your eggs in one basket then don't cry to me when you loose your butt.

Look up people you know in this link. See how much they have drawn on the US tax payers the last ten years. My name is not listed as I have drawn ZERO. If you did yours will be on the list.

Guy that owns the farm right next to me farms maybe 400 acres but knows how to milk the system. He has drawn over one million dollars the last ten years. He just kind of lazes around these days. He is just as bad or worse than a welfare deadbeat.
Data base of the what individuals have received in farm payments

I do not see the government buying and storing product for years on end anymore. Somebody in Washington would be looking to make political hay on that and succeeding.

I can't see the $40-50 milk lasting long enough to hurt the market either. If you want to see a new farm bill in a big hurry,just let one milk check go out for that amount.

I grew up in the 80's seemed like the school lunch ladies put cheese on everything. the 1st lady's (can't say or type her name) lunch thing/law won't allow that anymore.. too much fat.. kids hate the new lunch laws at school... they're forced to take "healthy" stuff they don't want or is too much to eat and more food is thrown away now. I certainly think some things don't belong in the school lunches like pop, but it is ridiculous now.

Very commendable of you guys to forgo the government dole so that Solindra GM and all the welfare frauds can collect plus college girls and 6th graders can get condoms and birth control. Not to mention subsidies for wind farms solar energy and the like. I get nothing from the government except social security but you can bet if I was eligible I would be taking everything I could to get some of my tax dollars back before they use it to buy votes to get reelected.

Okay. Question: How many of you think we'll actually revert to permanent farm program? Answer: IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.

All it will take is an extension of the current bill to take care of this so-called "issue." If they don't get a new one done post-election, they will pass an extension. Length of that extension will be dictated by several things -- how close/far they are on an overall bill; how the elections turned out (control of Senate, White House), etc.

And if they wait too long into 2013, they will get a different budget level to work with and that won't look near as good.

It would be a pretty simple matter to change the food stamp program to something like WIC (Women Infant Children nutrition program). You get coupons that are for given amounts of various types of foods, based on family size. So many pounds of meat, so many pounds of cheese, etc. Zero pounds of Fritos, Snickers, Otter Pops or Froot Loops.

Guvment is just horrified if you try to tell people how to live their lives, even while doling out money to them. I say, if its our money, we have a right to decide what it goes for, even if we can't stop it from going.

On the subject of school lunches (we called it "hot lunch" in my school)- When I was in about second grade, my mom packed a "sack lunch" for me every day, but the cooks at our school were wizards (farm wives, actually), and they whumped up some really good stuff for hot lunch. While I'm eating my leftover roast sandwich, the hot lunch crowd was having mashed potatoes and gravy, and I decided I'd rather have hot lunch. But I didn't want to hurt Mom's feelings, so I so I practiced what to say- but I was only half way through my prepared remarks when she caught on, and said it would be fine if I took hot lunch, and so I did, at a dollar a week (mid-1950's), as I recall. She told me later that she was really relieved not to have to make me lunch, but she thought that was what I wanted.

Google nmpf and milc it has a nice chart. The federal government sets the base price all US dairy farmers get paid except Idaho and California I think.get milc payments and they help but have only been in dairy business for four years now so carry Some deby. Expanded my head last fall from 30 to 70 milking and some days wish I had keep it small had more money and gave up a good job but it is w ha t I always wanted so I did it. I think what we will see here in New York is a lot of older dairy farmers and a lot of new ones quit since last fall my check dropped 25% and grain bill went up a lot but I planted a lot off corn and have been grinding the extra as high moisture ear corn so i should have300 days without much of a grain bill. A lot of farms here make there forages few make there own grain and the folks hit the hardest are the buy feed operation 525 protein mixes 365 corn meal 70 dollar a ton corn silage and 60 a ton haylage make it hard for them.

And what are you suppose to do when the yield average is around 30 bushel?