“We have heard from dairy farmers in Vermont facing the pressure of declining milk prices, and we will continue to fight for additional steps by USDA to support dairy farmers”.
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Approximately 11m pounds of cheese will be bought from private inventories and given to food banks across the country, according to the USDA.
U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says revenues for dairy producers have dropped 35% over the past two years and that’s led to a surplus of cheese which is at its highest level in 30 years.
The USDA says the step is to help “reduce a cheese surplus that is at a 30-year high”. This government donation will have a significant impact on their operations. Increases in import values are expected for horticultural and tropical products, which more than offset reductions in livestock, dairy, and poultry products. “Such agreements are key to a stable and prosperous farm economy, helping boost global demand for USA farm and food products, increasing US market share versus our competitors, and ensuring that our farmers and ranchers have stable and predictable markets for the quality goods they produce”. Too much supply and too little demand produced a growing mountain of cheese.
Take a look at this graph of the amount of cheese in storage over the past few decades.
But the government largely abandoned that effort. Just contemplate this graph for a minute.
There is so much cheese in circulation that $20 million will buy less than 1% of the 1.3 billion pounds of cheese now in storage. “I don’t expect it to have much actual impact on prices”, Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told us in an email.
Cheddar and mozzarella cheese are the most-consumed kinds of cheese in the United States, and account for the bulk of the cheese stockpile.
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Since 2009, USDA has worked to strengthen and support American agriculture, an industry that supports one in 11 American jobs, provides American consumers with more than 80 percent of the food we consume, ensures that Americans spend less of their paychecks at the grocery store than most people in other countries, and supports markets for homegrown renewable energy and materials. Farmers worldwide have cut back on production, allowing prices to return to normal.
