Dairy Pricing Association, Inc.

10/04/2026

We do not have to accept the abuse. We can stand together.

“You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything. You’ve got to be your own man—not a puppet on a string.” (Aaron Tippin)

I thought about those words today, and I had to ask myself:

Why have dairy farmers gone along with the abuse for so long?

Why have we accepted prices that do not cover the cost of producing the milk?

Why have we allowed processors, cooperatives, lenders, and policymakers to make decisions that determine whether our farms live or die—while telling us we simply need to become more “efficient”?

Why have we watched our neighbors disappear, one farm at a time, and allowed it to be called progress?

I think part of the answer is that farmers are built to endure.

We get up when we are sick. We work when we are hurting. We keep going through droughts, floods, broken equipment, dead calves, low milk prices, and empty bank accounts. We have been taught that good farmers do not complain. They tighten their belts, work harder, and figure it out.

That strength is admirable—but it has also been used against us.

Our silence was mistaken for consent.
Our endurance was treated as permission.
Our independence was exploited to keep us divided.

We were told not to make trouble. We were told there was nothing we could do. We were told that losing thousands of family farms was simply “structural adjustment”—as if those farms were numbers on a spreadsheet instead of families, communities, and generations of work.

But accepting mistreatment does not make us strong.

Standing against it does.

We do not have to be puppets on a string, producing more milk whenever the system demands it, absorbing every new cost, and quietly accepting whatever remains on the milk check.

We can ask questions.

We can demand transparency.

We can organize.

We can tell our stories.

We can challenge the people and institutions that profit while producers are driven from the land.

And we can refuse to accept the lie that this is simply the natural order of things.

It is not too late.

As long as farmers are still willing to speak, consumers are still willing to listen, and people are still willing to stand beside one another, change remains possible.

Maybe we should have stood up sooner. But regret will not save the farms that remain.

Courage might.

We cannot undo every loss—but we can decide that the destruction will not continue without resistance.

We do not need permission to stand up for ourselves.

And we do not have to accept abuse simply because we have endured it for this long.

It is time to cut the strings.

BTW this is one of my t shirt designs. DeNora Goletz designed it.

08/26/2026

We are here as a way for farmers to balance the scale a bit while feeding hungry people. The more participation from farmers, the more balance we can provide.

LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW A FREE MARKET SHOULD WORK.

In a functioning free market, there are multiple buyers competing for a product.

The seller can compare offers, negotiate terms, reject a bad deal, and take their product elsewhere.

Prices respond to genuine supply and demand. Contracts are understandable. Market information is transparent. No single buyer—or tiny handful of buyers—has enough power to dictate the terms to everyone else.

Now let’s look at dairy.

Many farmers have only one processor willing to pick up their milk. Some do not even have that.

Milk is highly perishable, must be collected on schedule, and cannot sit in a warehouse while the farmer waits for a better offer. You cannot shut off a cow like a factory machine when the price drops. She still has to be fed, housed, milked, and cared for—twice a day, every day.

The farmer often receives a price built through federal milk marketing orders, classified milk values, pooling, component calculations, premiums, hauling charges, assessments, and deductions.

Then that farmer receives a milk check—not an opportunity to negotiate.

Meanwhile, processors have consolidated. Cooperatives have consolidated. Local plants have closed. Farmers have lost alternative markets. In some regions, changing buyers is not a realistic option because there is nowhere else for the milk to go.

That is not healthy competition.

A market is not truly free merely because private companies participate in it.

If one side has multiple sources of supply while the other side has one possible buyer, that is not equal bargaining power.

If a farmer must accept the offered terms or dump a perishable product, that is not meaningful freedom of choice.

If the largest producers receive volume premiums that smaller farms cannot access—while the smaller farms may pay higher hauling costs—that is not a level playing field.

If government formulas influence the base price while consolidated handlers control market access, deductions, premiums, and contracts, please stop pretending this is some untouched free market where every farmer simply succeeds or fails according to personal efficiency.

Dairy is a heavily structured market operating inside an increasingly consolidated industry.

And here is the part people miss:

I am not asking for small dairies to be protected from competition.

I am asking for there to be enough genuine competition that we are actually allowed to compete.

Because “take this price or lose your market” is not a free market.

It is dependency wearing a free-market costume.

08/09/2026

Just dropping this here.

06/11/2026

Please note our email address has changed:

[email protected]

05/04/2026

Our friend Jeanne Rohl goes deep into her history of advocating for family farms!

69 likes, 3 comments. " 60 years of farming, family and fighting for agriculture."