US farmers dispose of milk as coronavirus disrupts dairy sector

Dairy farmers from the United States are sharing their “heart-wrenching” videos and stories, as they are forced to dump milk amid the coronavirus crisis.

A DAIRY farm in Varysburg, New York, has been forced to pour out its milk supplies due to the closure of restaurants, schools and food service businesses as a result of coronavirus lockdowns.

Nikki Boxler said her family’s dairy farm, Boxler Dairy, had begun dumping milk as processing plants were full.

“There is no place for it to go,” she said.

Ms Boxler added that despite strong retail demand for dairy products, the need for wholesale dairy had rapidly declined.

Farmers in several other US states have also been dumping their milk when faced with the falling demand.

“The sudden shift from wholesale food service markets to retail stores has created a logistical and packaging nightmare for plants processing milk, butter, and cheese — to put this into perspective, about half of consumers’ food budget was spent at restaurants and it would take millions of dollars to switch a plant from producing for wholesale to producing for retail,” Ms Boxler said.

“Watching your hard work literally go down the drain is heart-wrenching — the wasted product represents our livelihood and the massive amount of hard work that takes place year-round to produce it.”

She said due to the perishable nature of milk, the dairy industry was “hit harder and earlier than other agricultural commodities”.

Laura Johnson of Providence Dairy, a farm with 1200 cows at Climax, Georgia, said the farm had been forced to dump four tanker-loads of milk by Sunday (April 5).

A group of dairy organisations wrote a letter to US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to ask the US Department of Agriculture to help the dairy industry amid the closure of businesses and widespread stay-at-home orders.

Providence Dairy posted on Facebook, “It makes me sick to see the waste but all of the stores are full and there is no market for it now.

“Sadly this will be happening to dairy farms all over at some point. Pray for the dairy industry, and pray for all farmers. We need them now more than ever.”

More than 10,000 people have died from coronavirus in the United States.