Farmers struggling with low milk prices find little help from safety net

Dave Schwartz has been milking cows full-time for nearly 60 years, through boom times and busts. And since the late 1950s, he’s seen a lot of both. He tries to keep an optimistic outlook, but that’s been a difficult thing to do lately, as milk prices fall — prices in 2018 so far are nearing a two-year low. Schwartz says that’s putting a lot of financial stress on his dairy farm near the southwestern Minnesota community of Slayton.“It’s just a survival thing and hopefully you can hang in there until it turns around,” said Schwartz. “That’s kind of the way dairying is. It’s ups and downs.” Schwartz said he’s at break-even on his milk sales, but many dairy farmers are losing money. Making the current situation even worse is the failure of a federal program designed specifically for dairy farmers. It’s supposed to provide some financial help during unprofitable times.The margin protection program, as it’s known, was created in the 2014 farm bill.It’s basically an insurance program: Dairy farmers pay a premium to buy protection against falling milk prices.“I think the dairy industry was pretty enthusiastic following the 2014 farm bill,” said John Newton who works for the American Farm Bureau Federation, a group with thousands of farmer members that lobbies for agricultural issues. “About 80 percent of the U.S. milk supply was enrolled in the program — 24,000 out of 40,000 dairy farmers signed up to participate in the program.”But that enthusiasm faded as milk prices fell and farmers saw little return for premiums paid. Enrollment in the program has fallen sharply since then. The most recent figures show dairy farmers across the country have paid $100 million in premiums, but only received back about $12 million from the program, Newton said.