Russ Feingold: “I rise today to offer a measure which will serve as a first step towards eliminating the inequities borne by the dairy…”

“I rise today to offer a measure which will serve as a first step towards eliminating the inequities borne by the dairy farmers of Wisconsin and the upper Midwest under the Federal Milk Marketing Order system. The Federal Milk Marketing Order system, created nearly 60 years ago, establishes minimum prices for milk paid to producers throughout various marketing areas in the U.S. For sixty years, this system has discriminated against producers in the Upper Midwest by awarding a high price to dairy farmers in proportion to the distance of their farms from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. This legislation is very simple. It identifies the single most harmful and unjust feature of the current system, and corrects it. Under the current archaic law, the price for fluid milk increases at a rate of 21 cents per hundred miles from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, even though most milk marketing orders do not receive any milk from Wisconsin. Fluid milk prices, as a result, are $2.98 higher in Florida than in Wisconsin and over $1.00 higher in Texas. This method of pricing fluid milk is not only arbitrary, but also out of date and out of sync with the market conditions of 1999. It is time for this method of pricing--known as single-basing-point pricing--to come to an end.”