The pressure increases on dairy producers with high environmental and water costs and low prices in the grocery stores. Ching Lee at the California Farm Bureau Federation writes about the largest dairy cattle buyout in history. (Photo provided by California Farm Bureau Federation)

To help temper the nation’s milk supply and strengthen prices for dairy farmers, the National Milk Producers Federation is moving forth with its largest herd retirement to date, removing more than 100,000 dairy cows and 2 billion pounds of milk from the market.

This latest round of herd retirement comes amid one of the toughest years for the nation’s dairy farmers, who have been struggling with plunging milk prices, high production costs and a global recession that has dried up domestic and export sales of dairy products, said Jim Tillison, chief operating officer of the Cooperatives Working Together herd retirement program, which the NMPF administers.

Seventy-nine percent of the nearly 103,000 cows to be removed will come from the Western and Southwestern regions of the United States, while 60 percent of the farms selected are located east of the Mississippi River, according to CWT. Eighty-one percent of the milk removed will come from those two regions, a portion slightly higher than in the six previous CWT rounds.

To read the entire article, link to the California Farm Bureau Federation.