The Organic Trade Association successfully pushed their organic check off proposal forward in the Farm Bill. The implementation stage of allowing all organic operations to opt out of paying check-off funds will, hopefully, be enacted quickly and dairy processors will be able to reclaim their 20 cents per hundred weight check-off payment. All producers will agree that this 20 cents should immediately be added to the base pay price to start the process of recognizing the across-the-board input increases on all organic dairy farms. In fact, all the MAP’s and seasonal payments should be added to the base price rather than have them paid at the discretion of the processor. It’s time for the processors to pay producers their rightful share of the retail dollar.
Stonyfield has still not publicized anything about their pay price, for those that want to contract directly with the Stonyfield/Danone operation, but they have advertised for a field person to work with producers to build an organic pool of milk.
