Wisconsin farmers have begun to fight back against pricing regulations which take money from the price paid for their milk when it is imported to California.
Wisconsin joined forces with Nevada, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington Wednesday by filing as a friend to a case challenging California's interpretation of a 1997 farm bill, which California used to justify paying farmers outside California less for their milk.
According to Bill Sheik, an economist for the Dairy Institute of California, California takes a portion of what processors pay out-of-state farmers and distributes it to in-state dairy farmers.
These pricing allowances subsequently lower the price Wisconsin farmers are paid for their milk when brought to California processors. Sheik said even the California milk processors do not agree with the California system, since it drives away out-of-state customers.
In the past, many states filed cases against California's treatment of outside dairy farmers, but to no avail since California's dairy industry regulates itself differently than does the rest of the country. In every case, California succeeded in maintaining its advantage over states participating in the national system.
California increased its milk production in the last 12 years by 157 percent, causing Wisconsin farmers to take more notice of the effects of the price allowance.
\During those initial years nobody expected it to have this much of an impact,"" Lori Weaver from the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives said.
Now farmers and Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture Rod Nilsestuen are preparing to take on California once again in an attempt to level the playing field.
Weaver sees two roads for the processors in Wisconsin.
""Either processors here close down because they can't compete, or you're going to see milk processors from the Midwest begin to develop in the western states and then we start to lose our infrastructure here in the Midwest,"" she said. ""It's been very hard to compete.""
Tom Thieding, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, said California's milk system was originally created to support local dairy, doesn't make sense in a national market.
Thieding said he thought this attempt at making the milk pricing more uniform is like many others in the past.
""We're supporting the effort [but] ... we've seen dairy policy come and go. The outcome of this is not going to be the savior for dairy in the upper Midwest and I don't think it's going to be the downfall of dairy in California,"" Thieding said.
