Russ Feingold: “today I am offering a measure which could serve as a first step towards eliminating the inequities borne by the dairy…”

“today I am offering a measure which could 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 higher price to dairy farmers in proportion to the distance of their farms from areas of high milk production, which historically have been the region around Eau Claire, WI. My 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 farmers receive for fluid milk is higher the further they are from the Eau Claire region of the Upper Midwest. This provision originally was intended to guarantee the supply of fresh milk from the high production areas to distant markets in an age of difficult transportation and limited refrigeration. But the situation has long since changed and the provision persists at the detriment of the Wisconsin farmers even though most local milk markets do not receive any milk from Wisconsin.…”