Wisconsin’s Dairy Future: The Walmart Impact

An agricultural business expert says Wisconsin’s cheese production would likely act as a buffer if the milk processing model Walmart started using this summer ever expanded to impact America's Dairyland. "It should be remembered for Wisconsin, 85 to 90 percent of our milk goes to cheese manufacturing," University of Wisconsin – Madison College of Agriculture & Life Sciences Renk Professor of Agribusiness Brian Gould said. “For Wisconsin, beverage milk is not that important. For individual farms it is if they happen to supply to a plant. But for the industry as a whole, very minor share of our milk production goes to fluid milk,” Gould added. In June, Walmart officially went into the milk processing business, creating 200 new jobs at their new Indiana plant. One-hundred additional contract jobs, including truck drivers, were also added. Thirty dairy farms and co-ops, within an average 140 mile radius of the Fort Wayne, Ind. location have also received Walmart contracts. They supply the plant local milk. Then it is sent to nearly 500 Walmart stores in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. However, that ‘opportunity’ also cost farmers their milk contracts. Dean Foods losing some business, so Walmart could process their own milk, trickled down to more than 100 dairy farms in eight states: Indiana, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee."They're really up in the air. They don't know what they're going to do," said Kentucky dairy farmer Carl Chaney, who worried about family members who lost their Dean contract. "It'll be kind of rough for a little bit if they don't find another milk plant to take you," Pennsylvania dairy farmer Bob Nickerson, who lost his Dean contact, added. The Walmart model comes at a time when Wisconsin finds itself losing hundreds of dairy farms every year.