ABC Nightly News recently did a story on the economic plight our country’s dairy farmers are currently enduring. A good piece to watch.

DAIRY WOES/RECESSION – The recession has slammed many industries but Mike Von Fremd on WORLD NEWS noted that “dairy farmers across the country have been hit by the global recession as hard as any single segment of the economy.” Case in point – milk. Von Fremd notes that “it costs dairy farmers a dollar fifty to produce a gallon of milk but since the beginning of the year, they’ve only been getting a dollar back… a staggering loss of fifty cents on every gallon they produce.” And that’s not all – Von Fremd reports that “although milk sales are up slightly, sales of other dairy products at the supermarket are down: cheese, ice cream, butter, even yogurt.” That has led to many dairy farmers getting out of the business. Von Fremd: “The National Milk Producers Federation runs a farmer-financed program that bought… over 100 thousand dairy cows so far this year. All were slaughtered to reduce the number of cows producing milk. But even a drop in the amount of milk has not managed to increase its price.”