On November 9 Bailey led a milk dump protest near this town in central Maine. Two dozen farmers and an equal number of supporters gathered at the farm of Egide and Carrie Dostie while 10,000 pounds of milk were poured into a manure pit. The farmers were protesting the low price they are getting for their product.

Bailey said he received $12.10 for a hundredweight (100 pounds) of milk. On average a dairy farmer needs to receive about $17 a hundredweight to cover costs. But for a dairy farmer like Bailey, who milks about 50 cows, it takes between $23 and $24 a hundredweight to break even.

Bailey, 40, an eighth-generation farmer, has a 450-acre farm. His ancestors were given the land on Bailey Hill as payment for fighting in the American Revolutionary War.

Maine’s top agricultural products are potatoes and dairy products, followed by eggs, fish, and shellfish farming. Maine ranks second in New England for milk and livestock production.

Following the protest Bailey made a decision to sell half his herd. "For me producing bulk milk is a loss," he said. Half the milk he now produces is processed on the farm into butter and milk and sold to neighbors and others through his small home-delivery dairy. The other half is sold as bulk milk.

Bailey grows hay and corn, and also sells wood from his land to make ends meet.

Earlier in 2002 Bailey sold six acres of land to buy a used tractor rather than add to the $120,000 in debt he carries.

Other farmers in the area are doing the same. Donald and Jill Gage, who have been on a farm in New Sharon, Maine, that has been in their family since the 1950s, sold two tractors the week before the milk dump because they could not afford to keep them.

Bailey explained that in his town there were about 40 farmers in the 1970s, while today there are only 10. Statewide there are fewer than 500 dairy farmers, down from 5,100 in 1945. Farmers today produce more than three times as much milk, with one tenth the number of farms.

Neighboring Massachusetts and Vermont are no different. A decade ago there were about 400 dairy farmers in Massachusetts; today there are 249. Thirty years ago there were more than 4,000 dairy farmers in Vermont, while today there are less than 1,400.

The Dosties, who still owe $1 million on the farm they bought five years ago, told reporters at the protest they cannot just add more cows to the 270 they milk. "That should not be the solution. You can only support so many cows with a certain land base," said Egide Dostie.

Bailey, who also participated in protests in 1998 against retailers of milk, said he made a leaflet for the November 9 action and passed it out to neighbors and customers. Milk truck drivers took some leaflets when they picked up bulk milk at his farm and implement dealers passed them out too.

At the milk dump Bailey asked rhetorically, "Do you want to get paid for your profession or go out slowly one by one? Do we want to stand up and tell the world we are going broke and processors are getting filthy rich off of us?"  
 
Milk processing monopolies
A few companies control milk processing in the United States. The main one is Dallas-based Dean Foods, which processes 30 percent of the country’s milk. National Dairy Holdings, also based in Dallas, is the second-largest milk processor, accounting for 7 percent. National Dairy Holdings was founded in 2001 with spinoffs ordered by regulators from the merger that year of the milk processing giants, Suiza Foods and Dean Foods.

In New England Dean controls 75 percent of the milk processed and H.P. Hood controls 15 percent. At the end of last year Hood and National Dairy Holdings announced they were merging.

On New England supermarket shelves,the price of milk has remained at $2.99 a gallon while the price farmers receive for their milk has fallen by 50 cents over the last year to $1.15 a gallon.

Subsidies from the 2002 Farm Bill, which replaced the expired Northeast Dairy Compact, a regional subsidy program, provides small dairy owners with 45 percent of the difference between their costs and the price they get for their bulk milk.

Dexter Randall, a Vermont dairy farmer, said in a phone interview that he receives a little less money from the current program than he did under the Compact. The new farm bill, he explained, "lines the pockets of agribusiness and gives a little money to the farmers."

Randall pointed out that detractors of the Northeast Compact argued that "it raised the price the consumer paid for milk, but since the Compact has expired the price of milk in the stores has not come down."

Ted Leonard works in a meatpacking plant in the Boston area. Maggie Trowe, a garment worker, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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