EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. -
The price of milk could triple by next year if Congress doesn't get the Farm Bill passed.
That could really hurt Vermont's biggest money makers... dairy farmers... by putting milk at eight dollars a gallon!
Would you boycott milk if it got to eight dollars a gallon? Well, the Agency of Agriculture says it could happen. I talked with local farmers who are doing their best to keep that from happening.
At the Fairmont Farm in East Montpelier, seven hundred cows are milked three times a day.
"We ship about 30 million pounds of milk a year," Fairmont Farm Owner Richard Hall said.
Vermont's dairy business is strong, but with uncertainty looming around the unpassed Farm Bill, the price of milk could skyrocket to eight dollars a gallon!
"A shock like that to retail prices may turn people off from drinking milk, they may just say forget it," Diane Bothfeld said from the Agency of Agriculture.
If the Farm Bill doesn't pass by January first, we'll revert back to an archaic cost basis formula from the 1940's that would really hurt farmers and consumers.
"I bet the folks at USDA are dusting off the books to remember how to do this," Bothfeld said.
The Farm Bill expires at the end of this year and isn't even on the table yet.
"It's very concerning to farmers, it doesn't give them any kind of certainty on what to do for next year," Bothfeld said.
So even though Hall says that eight dollars a gallon will probably never happen, he does think that prices have a good chance of going up, but even if they do, they're likely to go back down.
"I think food costs are going to be higher this year because of the drought," Hall said.
The bill also provides a safety net for farmers. If unpassed, they wouldn't get help from the federal government program that pays dairy farmers when milk prices fall below a certain level.
The Farm Bill also includes programs like three squares, Vermont's food stamp program, so there's a lot of pressure on law makers to keep the country from falling off the so called fiscal cliff, and then moving on to the Farm Bill.
