By Colleen Rothe

The headlines this weekend – if you were so inclined to pay attention to such business headlines versus the scarier ones of Korea launching nuke testing – were mooing about plunging milk prices.

Yes, as a mom with three growing kids still at home, a gallon of milk is used up in our household pretty quick. So what it costs, where to get it cheap and fresh, is a must for our family.

Luckily in Western Washington, dairy farmers aren’t too hard to come by. So prices, at an all-time high of nearly $5 a gallon (on sale, mind you) last summer, have evened off and I can now normally get a steroid-free variety of milk for about $2 a gallon.

But the recent downgrade in prices, which is great for the average American consumer, is hurting dairy farmers. Granted, the prices the consumer is paying don’t immediately reflect the wholesale price the farmer is getting.

According to the Dairy Farmers of America, the average price farmers were receiving for milk last July was nearly $4 a gallon. This past week, many were lucky if they got just over $1 a gallon.

Dairy farmers for years have had to live with a boom-and-bust mentality. Most of the profit in the milk arena is for those that process, package and distribute it. The middleman is the one seeing the greatest profit and who controls the cost of milk more so than the farmer.

But today’s news – which shows that farmers today make less than their predecessors from 40 years ago – it’s easy to see that come fall we could have less dairy farmers in America. Less farmers means the scales of supply and demand will tip again.

Talk to any traditional dairy farmer and they will tell you that the product itself makes it hard to regulate prices. Milk spoils fast, right? Grain farmers can hold out and store until prices increase. But dairy farmers are not so lucky. They must sell raw milk and sell it fast before it spoils. Cows keep producing milk whether we’re living in a New Depression or climbing out of it.

There is some debate amongst lawmakers, spurred in part by lobbying dairy farmers, to change the way the U.S. Department of Agriculture prices milk – to revamp the system, if you will. The change would allow farmers to price milk to include what they pay for feed, fuel and other supplies. Oh, and don’t forget that their feed prices are still high because it’s more profitable for so many grain farmers – especially corn – to sell their product for ethanol production and not feed.

If some sort of price-fixing happens, milk would be alone in the commodity world to have a government-set price determined by production investment.

But the Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the Associated Press that he wants to see the results of other efforts before the tackling and reworking of milk pricing. For instance, the USDA just recently donated 500,000 pounds of excess powdered milk to needy countries to reduce U.S. Supplies. Additionally, they are looking at slaughtering excess dairy cows.

On the local level, some farming co-ops are looking at combining efforts to cut out the middleman and get their product to market on their own. This would broaden their ability to turn the raw milk into more than just a gallon of milk, creating local yogurt, cheese varieties and fill the shelves of the local food banks with powdered milk.

You may just find that your local farmers market this summer will also have a dairy farmer setting up shop. You may want to take the time and get to know them, purchase their new middleman-free product and support their efforts to keep the farm in the family and a gallon of milk reasonably priced.

Come fall, some of these efforts may balance out the plunging wholesale prices of today. Regardless of the outcome, the consumer won’t know what it will cost to pour milk on their morning cereal this time next year. Milk does freeze*, however. Clear a spot in the chest freezer. Stock up now. Visit your Farmer’s Market this summer. But don’t hold your breath.

*Freeze milk in plastic freezer containers or special freezer-proof glass jars. Leave some extra space at the top since milk expands during freezing. If packaged in a wide-mouth container, leave 1/2-inch head space for pints and 1-inch for quarts. If packaged in a narrow-mouth container (such as jars), leave 1 1/2-inch head space for either pints or quarts.

Plan to use frozen milk within a month – no more than two. Thaw milk in the refrigerator. Stir well before using.