The recovery that the dairy industry hoped for in 2010 hasn’t looked as good as producers hoped, but interest in the dairy industry and initiatives to change it could spur some momentum, according to a Purdue University extension dairy specialist.
Mike Schutz says that the state of the industry does not look as positive as it did two months ago.
“2009 was a miserable year for milk prices,” he says. “They have been this low before, but not for this long in recent years, and feed prices are twice as high as they have been in other downturns. It has just been a really depressing time for dairy farmers.”
The dairy industry was hopeful that milk prices would increase as 2010 began, and prices did improve. However, they have fallen in the last two weeks, due to growing cheese inventories and an unexpectedly strong supply of replacement heifers.
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