By  E. W. Lang

Select Milk Producers, headquartered in New Mexico, has apparently parted ways with National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF).  Select is a cooperative of 99 farm families, according to their website.  Hoard's Dairyman lists the coop as number seven in size, based on 7.75 billion pounds of milk shipped per year.  For comparison, the second largest U.S. milk coop, California Dairies, handles 16 billion lbs. of milk and has 567 members.  Select Milk, therefore, has fewer bigger members and a different perspective than California Dairies or Dairy Farmers of America with 8,000 member farms ranging from a few cows to a few thousand cows each. 

Producing milk in New Mexico is producing milk where you can expect to be paid less for your product than anywhere else in the United States, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Witnesseth:   Hoard's Dairyman recently listed the July, 2021, mailbox pay prices for some of the various United States.  New Mexico averaged $14.75 per cwt.  Iowa got $17.  New York got $17.32, and California got $17.16 per cwt.  It's difficult to make a living producing in New Mexico if your cost of labour and overhead isn't something close to zero plus change, which is apparently the case on some dairies, all of them very large.  Conversely, Florida dairy farmers got $21 per cwt., but they, like everyone, have their own unique challenges and costs.  As such, things can be tough all over, and free markets are cruel as ever, from New Mexico to New York, Florida and then some.

Anyway, Select Milk Producers Coop also has interests in several other states, so the benefit of NMPF membership may have become of less value to the few large farms being served.   NMPF is a farm-commodity policy organization representing a majority of U.S. dairy-marketing cooperatives. Its members market more than two-thirds of the U.S. milk supply.  Select Milk Producers are not currently listed on the NMPF website. 

National Milk is often the target of ire within the dairy producer community - rightly or wrongly, I don't know.   During the Nixon administration, milk coops just delivered cash to the White House in exchange for higher milk price supports.  And no, I did not make that up, it's factually true unlike that whole Watergate thing.  

This was a holiday abbreviated trading week because of Thanksgiving, and a snoozer it was.  Block cheese gained one cent, barrels were steady and butter lost five cents per lb.  November and December averages for Class III and IV Futures were $18.14 and $19.03 per cwt., losses of 13 and six cents, respectively.