With profits tight, Connecticut dairy farmers look to Congress
WASHINGTON -- Two years ago, Benjamin Freund's dairy farm was teetering on a financial precipice as plummeting milk prices and skyrocketing feed costs squeezed his 270-cow operation in East Canaan, a village in the northwest corner of Connecticut.
"It forced us to go right to the end of our credit lines," Freund recalled. "We owned a lot less of our farm and the bank had a lot more leverage... We got into a situation that was very uncomfortable."
So it's no wonder that Freund, along with many other Connecticut dairy farmers, is now looking to Congress to churn out an overhaul of federal dairy policy, before another crisis hits.
The sense of urgency has been heightened by the work of the so-called "Super Committee," a congressional debt-reduction panel tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in federal savings over the next decade. Agriculture subsidies are sure to be on that committee's list, giving farmers across the country the political jitters.
"There's no question that ag subsidies are going to be scrutinized heavily" by the committee, said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, who represents eastern Connecticut and most of Connecticut's dairy farms.
"It's definitely something that people should be very, very aware of," said Courtney, a member of the House Agriculture Committee. "To the extent that the subsidies safety-net is considered an item to be protected, it's going to have to compete with obviously a lot of other issues before the deficit committee."
Indeed, some lawmakers hope to put dairy reform on a fast-track, ahead of a broader re-write of the Farm Bill, which Congress is supposed to tackle in 2012. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., released a dairy reform plan last month, and he plans to introduce formal legislation when Congress returns to Washington next month.
"We need to move these dairy changes sooner rather than later," Peterson said in an Aug. 17 interview with Dairyline.com. "A lot of the fundamentals in the market that were there in 2008, prior to the collapse in 2009, we're seeing those same kind of things going on here in 2011, and I'm concerned that... we could have a another downturn, and the existing system just does not provide the safety net that we need.
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WASHINGTON -- Two years ago, Benjamin Freund's dairy farm was teetering on a financial precipice as plummeting milk prices and skyrocketing feed costs squeezed his 270-cow operation in East Canaan, a village in the northwest corner
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