GREENLEAF, Wis. (WFRV) It’s enough to make any dairy farmer curdle, massive amounts of milk are being dumped because of the COVID pandemic.
Mark Mueller, owner of Mueller Dairy Farm in Greenleaf says that on April 1, a driver from the Dairy Farmers of America informed them they had to dump 56,000 pounds of milk.
That massive amount of milk was dumped in pit on their property.
The milk harvested from the nearly 1,000 cows at Mueller’s Dairy Farm will rot in that pit, because the COVID pandemic is preventing dairy farmers, like him, from getting their milk to market.
Mueller says, “the closing of restaurants is a problem. Some feel that they don’t have a place to haul our product.”
Other local farms are dumping even more milk.
J and J Pickart Farm in Fond du Lac says they have had to dump up to 65,000 pounds of milk per day.
Mueller says they’ll get reimbursed but the irony is that while some grocery stores are limiting the number of milk purchases, farms like his will continue to dump thousands of pounds of milk.
Mueller says, “It’s like the principle of it. You put all that labor and work into the milk and you hate to see it go down the drain when you know that there are people starving in the world and in our country even. We hate to throw things away.”
Dairy groups in Wisconsin want the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide help through the Coronavirus Aids package or CARES Act and make a large dairy commodity purchase – that could be distributed to food pantries.
