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Hearing on milk marketing orders resumes January 16th

An American Farm Bureau economist expects USDA’s hearing on milk pricing could wrap up early in the new year, but the process is far from over.

Danny Munch says the Federal Milk Marketing Order hearing restarts in Carmel, Indiana January 16^th after a holiday break. “There’s an expectation that it will go for at least two more weeks with sort-of a gap week in between those weeks as some of the dairy groups have their big meetings between those periods.”

Munch says many of the main categories have already been covered, and once the hearing is over, USDA will then publish thousands of pages of hearing transcripts for review. “And stakeholders will be able to look through those thousands of pages and file corrections to the transcript, so say there were some numbers that they misrepresented, they can file some corrections to that transcript. After that, they can then file what’s called a post-hearing brief.”

Munch says once the parties have submitted their conclusionary remarks, USDA will review the information and publish their recommended decision in the Federal Register. “Stakeholders can go on the Federal Register website and comment on the recommended rule. USDA then takes all of those public comments, digests those, and then they make a final rule. The difference then becomes, in the federal orders system versus a lot of other regulatory processes, that farmers vote in a referendum on that final rule.”

Munch tells Brownfield he believes stakeholders are more engaged by having the hearing in-person instead of just virtually. “It sort of adds to the actual input you can get out of people. I think you’re a little more engaged when you’re in-person. Maybe timing wise, it took longer because it was in-person. I do think the virtual option for farmers to testify online was very well received. We got a lot of our farmer members to testify online on those Fridays.”

And Munch says USDA chose Carmel, Indiana for its proximity to farmers. “USDA tells us they wanted it somewhere close to at least some farmers so they could come in-person. Some of our members did take advantage of that in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, those surrounding states, which was helpful.”

In the new year, Munch says American Farm Bureau will continue advocating for a statutory change in the new farm bill that would authorize mandatory and audited processor cost surveys, which he says is a key part of fixing the federal orders.

Munch says the process is far from finished, and he’s not expecting any changes to be implemented to the federal orders until mid-2025.