MILKING THE SYSTEM - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 132

Joel Greeno milks forty-eight cows on his 160-acre farm in Kendall, Wisconsin, and rotates them on
160 acres of pasture. He began his dairy operation in 1993 and a year later helped found the Family Farm
Defenders. He recently testified on the state of the industry and about the problems faced by dairy farmers.
I'd just like to start with the Greeno family [that] has farmed in Monroe County, Wisconsin for 150 years
now. Mom and Dad's twenty-ninth wedding anniversary present was a farm foreclosure, and their thirtieth an-
niversary present was a sheriff's auction on the courthouse steps. That forced me to move my dairy operation out
of their facility. . . . You know, my dad battled through polio, a debilitating back injury, cancer, but he couldn't
beat low milk prices, and something has to be done. In mid-January, a New York State dairy farmer shot fifty-
one of his cows and then himself. We know of nearly one hundred dairy farmers that have committed suicide to
date since the '08 crash. It's got to stop. . . . Dairy farmers deserve dignity. They deserve justice. They deserve
cost of production plus a profit. 19
Dairy farmers, especially those with small herds, are being driven out of business because a tiny handful
of companies control the industry. The mantra in dairy, like other areas of agriculture, is “get big or get
out.” A few companies buy the majority of their milk from farms and process it into dairy products and
industrial food ingredients. Most dairy farmers market their milk through cooperatives. These cooperatives
allow producers to pool the product and participate in the pricing set by the federal dairy marketing order
that was first established in 1937, when the USDA began administering the federal milk marketing orders
that divide the country into regions. They establish the definitions for different classes of milk, allegedly
based on the cost of production in different regions.
Today the corporate-like cooperatives determine how to distribute the milk payments among the mem-
bership, and the cooperative is not required to pass any price premiums for the highest-value products to
its members. In many areas the cooperative is the only buyer, forcing farmers to endure this discriminatory
treatment by the cooperative because they do not have other viable marketing alternatives. 20
Consolidation also slashed the number of dairy cooperatives by half in twenty years, but the smaller
number market a larger share of milk. In 1980, there were 435 dairy cooperatives that marketed 77 percent
of the fluid milk; by 2002, there were only 196 cooperatives, but they marketed 86 percent of the milk. 21
Dairy farmers are extremely vulnerable because of the alliances between corporate-style cooperatives
and the milk handling, processing, and manufacturing industry. Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), by
far the largest cooperative, controls 30 percent of milk production in the United States, according to the
group's Web site. The top four dairy co-ops control 40 percent of fluid milk sales: DFA; California Dair-
ies, Inc.; Land O'Lakes; and Northwest Dairy Association. DFA is a marketing “cooperative” with more
than eighteen thousand members and ties to big processing companies that collect and market milk. DFA
was created in 1998 out of the merger of four large cooperatives. Dairy farmers effectively are required to
market their milk through DFA to access the marketplace, and they take whatever price DFA offers.
Warren Taylor has a lot to say about DFA and the rest of the dairy industry. And he has firsthand ex-
perience. His father, Bert Warren, was a well-known dairy technology expert, and he followed in his dad's
footsteps. In 1974, Taylor received a degree in dairy technology from Ohio State University and started
his career with Safeway Stores as a project manager for the nation's first computer-controlled milk plant.
He went on to work for Safeway as a corporate staff engineer specializing in processing design for thirty
milk and ice cream plants in the United States and Canada. At that time, between 1977 and 1987, Safeway
had the world's largest fluid milk bottling operation. After leaving Safeway he worked on engineering and
design projects for DFA, Dannon, Land O'Lakes, and other processors.
Taylor says that in the 1950s, when his father was in the industry, milk was fresh and alive, produced
from grazing cows, and processed and sold locally. Taylor and his wife, Victoria, wanted to provide the
same kind of healthy dairy products for their community. Today they operate Snowville Creamery in