CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — It’s time to start crying over spilled milk, or at least dumped milk. That’s exactly what dairy farmers are doing across America as they’re forced to throw out thousands of gallons of milk.
Dumping is pretty much what it sounds like, disposing of milk before it is delivered to processors. One of the reason dairy farmers have been dumping their product is due to the large drop in demand from schools, restaurants, and other food service providers.
It's happening particularly in the Midwestern region, but also in some parts of Texas.
Over the last several years, farmers have already faced drops in dairy prices because of overproduction and an increase in milk alternatives. Now, the bigger reason that they're having to get rid of their milk is because they can't find any processing plants that can accommodate the additional milk.
“There’s only so much processing capacity and everyday we’re closing processing plants in the United States," Joe Knolle, owner of Knolle Dairy Farms said.
Knolle's family-owned business is the only operating dairy farm in South Texas region. In the last three years, Knolle said he’s had to dump gallons of milk from his dairy farm.
"During the pandemic and during the big freeze, we both had incidents where were unable to ship the milk" Knolle said.
Now, he doesn’t have to that problem because he has his own processing plant. But not every farmer is so lucky, especially when large manufacturers are at capacity.
“They’re just pumping out the milk," Knolle said, "You have so much milk pumping out that they have to keep on growing their production to stay at a profitable level. And ultimately, there’s this huge tidal wave of milk just coming down the pipeline, but where does it all go?”
While having his own processing plant, Knolle has also transitioned to a more traditional way of grass feeding his cattle to bring to produce a more natural product for customers, while also cutting out the middle man.
“A cow can live off of grass, a cow can product milk off of grass," Knolle said. "And this has actually been a further way that we can capitalize on now because we have the ability to put our milk in a carton and sell it to the public.”
The International Dairy Foods Association said about 5% of the country’s entire milk supply is being dumped. That percentage could get even higher if the distribution isn’t improved in the next few months.
Farmers have high hopes that dumping milk now could help their farms in the long run and it could also help make sure that Americans have enough dairy products in the future.
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