Farmers still waiting for milk price reforms

NORWICH – President Obama’s Super Committee was supposed to have addressed new agriculture policies that would have helped dairy farmers earn a price for milk that is comparable to the cost to produce it.

Like other taxing and spending plans and reforms designed to cut the $15 trillion deficit, however, milk pricing reforms failed to garner enough bi-partisan support.

The plight of the dairy industry has been a long-standing crisis. According to South New Berlin dairyman Ken Dibbell, a steadfast advocate for New York’s dairy farmers, the current system has coincided with the idling of four-fifths of the nation’s dairy farms, or 450,000 down to 50,000 operating farms over the past two decades.