U.S. Dairy Farmers Committing Suicide

by Spence Cooper on 01/06/09 at 8:12 am

The LA Times reports dairy farmers are pawning everything they own for secured bank loans in order to stay afloat from falling milk prices and the high cost of feed. Experts claim that if milk prices don’t rise very soon, many farmers will go out of business.

“It is a mess. The market just disappeared with the global economic crisis, and unfortunately for dairy producers, they can’t simply turn the cows off to reduce the supply of milk,” said Michael Marsh, chief executive of Western United Dairymen in Modesto. “It’s particularly tragic because these family farms are multi-generational operations, several of which will have a foreclosure or a bankruptcy as the last of their legacy to California agriculture,” Marsh said.

The situation is so dire, two California dairy farmers recently committed suicide, and “farm groups report a jump in stress-related health issues among dairy farmers”.

“We are getting more phone calls and concerns about suicides than ever,” said Michael Rosmann, executive director of AgriWellness Inc., a Harlan, Iowa, nonprofit operating mental-health hotlines for farmers in seven Midwestern states.

“This is an unbelievable career wreck. The amount of wealth being destroyed in this industry every week is just mind-boggling,” said Geoffrey Vanden Heuvel, who owns dairies in Chino and Corona. “The emotional toll this is taking is just amazing.”

Some farmers are planning to dump their milk as part of a national protest next week. “If they are not going to allow us to make a living, we will just dump it down the drain,” said Arie DeJong, who owns several dairies and 20,000 cows in California and Arizona. “We just can’t keep losing money like this.”

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