News

Half price milk

A Michigan dairy farmer says too much milk in the market is putting many dairy farmers in a pinch.

Shortly after Michigan dairy farmer Carla Wardin and her husband Chris purchased their family’s farm the milk market was booming.  Wardin tells Brownfield seven years later – milk production is high and there isn’t always a place to sell it, which puts added pressure on prices and profit margins.

“When you are paying the same bills that you always had and you are getting much less money than you did even two years ago, it’s going to affect every decision you make.” She says, “We are making less than half of milk per hundredweight than we were three years ago.”

She says like other farmers they’re tightening their belts where they can – without cutting the quantity or quality of milk. “We really do love what we do and we really love having a farm.”  Wardin says, “In low times like this we really just try to be optimists that we are confident that the prices will turn around, and we just hope it’s sooner rather than later.”

The USDA expects the average all milk price for this year to be between $14.60 and $15.10 per hundredweight, down about 40 percent from 2014.

AUDIO: Interview with Carla Wardin