Farm Milk Prices Are Up (Finally)!
Posted by Preston Bristow on August 2nd, 2007 filed in Vermont Farms 101
It’s been tough to stay optimistic about the dairy industry in Vermont. The summer of 2001 saw farm milk prices at $15 a hundredweight (that’s 100 pounds of milk, or 11.6 gallons, abbreviated “cwt”). It slid to a brutal $11 cwt in the fall of 2003, rose to a hopeful $20 cwt in the spring of 2004, then plummeted to a devastating $13 cwt in 2006, a year with a prolonged wet season that hurt hay production and nearly destroyed the state’s corn crop.
What a difference a year can make! I’ve been hearing reports of $20+ cwt for conventional milk and $30+ cwt for organic milk, and a dairy economist for Agri-Mark has recently predicted that these record higher prices may hold through 2008.
Despite the long hours and the uncertainty in prices, there are those who want to own a dairy farm in Vermont. I talk to them all the time. What I find interesting is that I’ve recently been contacted by several dairy farmers wondering if now, when farm milk prices are at record highs, might be the time to sell. Wouldn’t it be exciting to see the downward trend in the number of Vermont dairy farms stopped, or even reversed? The key will likely be with the farm lenders and whether they see this price trend as something to bank on.
An article from the Burlington Free Press and a press release from Agri-Mark that make for interesting reading are attached below:
http://www.agrimark.net/PDFs/pressprices2007.pdf
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