836—Lancaster Firming, Saturday, November 14,1981
The Milk
Check
TOM JURCHAK
County Agent
BACK TO SQUARE ONE
It look only 21 days for Congress
and the President to take away the
38 cent increase in the support
price that they gave you on Oc
tober 1 and roll it back to the $12.80
you had on September 30.
That’s because it’s taking longer
to write a new farm bill than they
had planned and one of the
hangups is dairy. The House ap
proved a four year farm bill on
October 22 by a narrow vote of 193
to 180 but it included the Bedell
amendment.
This calls for continuing the
present support price for one year
then going to 72.5 percent of parity
for a year then 70 percent for two
years. Those last two years have a
maximum of 3.5 billion pounds of
milk equivalent for CCC purchases
or the support price goes below 70
percent. This is different than the
Senate version, so now the whole
bill goes to a conference com
mittee to iron out the details.
The only thing that’s certain now
is that the present support price of
$12.80 will stay for another year.
Your only hope for improvement
now is a change in the “make
allowance” to get the manufac
turing milk price up to $12.80 from
the present price of $12.34 which is
46 cents below the support price.
This would be worth more than
getting a 75 percent of parity price
with no change in the present
allowance of $1.22 for butter
powder and $1.37 for cheese which
hasn’t been changed in two years. ,
ANOTHER ROADBLOCK
Along with being stymied on
price supports it may be a while
before you have a chance to vote in
Pennsylvania in a icteienUmn to
support an advertising and
promotion program.
Dairylea and Lehigh Valley are
bolding out for a matching funds
program that would allow some of
the money to be use for brand
advertising. This would require an
act ut the legislature to change the
present law and affect established
programs for apples, potatoes and
cherries.
Unless the other dairy co-ops and
the general farm organizations
support an effort to go with a
referendum under the present
legislation, it will be a long tune
coming in Pennsylvania.
BIG CHEESE
Milk producers generally have
some vague idea that increases in
cheese consumption have been a
help to them but most of them don’t
appreciate its tremendous value to
the industry and the prices they
receive.
Just m the last ten years, while
fluid milk consumption dropped
seven percent from 271 pounds to
252 pounds per person per year and
butter lost 22 percent of ns sales
from 5.3 to 4.1 pounds,'Cheese was
making gigantic gams from 11.5
pounds to 17.3 pounds for an in
crease to 50 percent.
With the increased population
during the-last ten years, total
consumption of American types of
cheese has gone from 1.4 million
pounds to 2.4 million for a whop
ping 70 percent jump. And that’s
just for the American types (like
! ATTENTION FARMERS I
FIBERGLASS FORAGE
FUNNEL w/KIT
(Kleen Chute)
iHr'
:Pf,
Buy Direct From Manufacturer
TOP QUALITY *97 50
DEALERS WELCOME
CALL 717-626-1833
Mon. thru Thurs. 5 to 7 P.M.
Or Write to;
SOUDERSBURG SALES
116 N. Soudersburg Road
Gordonville, PA 17529
clicddar, colby, and monterey
jack; that make up only 60 percent
of our cheese production.
Another way to appreciate the
value of cheese is to recognize that
nationally, fanners produce 60
percent of their milk for
manufacturing dairy products. Out
of all that “necessary surplus”
milk, 46 percent is used to make
cheese which has become a |S
billion market for your milk. Is it
any wonder we encounter such
puns at dairy promotion meeting
as "what a fnend we have in
cheeses,” or worse yet "it is
Cheddar to give than to receive.”
CHEAP IMITATIONS
With the boom m cheese con
sumption which really started
back around 1965, it didn’t take
long for someone to get the idea of
making it “just as good but
cheaper’ ’ and by 1970 it started.
While the American type cheeses
jumped 70 percent in consumption
in ten years, mozzarella was
gaming up to 10 percent a year.
Most of this was due to a national
craze for pizza that—no matter
what else might be included it
had to be entombed in a layer of
mozzarella cheese. As a result last
year about 20 percent of all our
cheese production was mozzarella.
Imitating mozzarella on pizza
wasn’t too difficult. It’s not an
“aged” cheese and when the pizza
is baked it’s too difficult to tell that
it was made with casein instead of
milk. In addition, the cost of the
imitation was a third less than the
dairy product so there was real
incentive to make it. It’s estimated
that very soon mutations will have
r • —.
THIHKIf
BUILDI
£ READ LANCASTER FARMING'S I
I ADVERTISING TO FIND ALL I
| YOUR NEEDS!
50 percent of the mozzarella
market and keep climbing.
NO END IN SIGHT
But it didn’t stop there. On any
evening you can go to your local
supermarket and find lots of
imitation cheese in addition to
what’s m the frozen pizza case.
Some of them just take out the
butterfat to reduce the calories for
weight watchers while others go all
the way substituting vegetable oils
for butterfat and casern for the
milk protein. And the prices are
lower on the mutations of the
American types also-about 40
cents or 17 percent less for the
imitation Cheddar compared to 12
ounces of good New York cheddar.
Besides the lower price, they tell
you in big letters such things as “90
percent less cholesterol’’ or “75
percent less fat” or "50 percent
less calones” or in one way or
another appeal to the current diet
trends.
You may thunk the threat of
mutation cheese isn’t serious but
you’ve lost over five percent of
your total cheese sales last year
and that is expected to rise to 15
percent by 1985. To put it another
way—each tune you lose one
percent of cheese sales you have
lost $l2O million of dairy farm
income. That’s an average of
$1,825 per farm last year and $5,475
per farm by 1985.
You didn’t do much to stop the
invasions of your market by
oleomargarine or mutation dessert
toppings or coffee whiteners but if
you ignore the threat of mutation
cheese you’ll lose the only friend
you have left m the dairy industry.
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