Thread by @FreshAirFarmer

I've seen over the last few days a lot of stories, comments and mixed messages about farmers having to dump milk.

I thought I'd clear a few things up as the perspective from the farm.

A thread:

We were included in the farmers asked to dump milk. We dumped a little over 4000L of raw unpasteurized milk. It's what we produce over a 48 hour period.

In case you are wondering, it's not a fun thing to do. We are proud of the work we do & the nutrition we provide. We don't want to see that wasted.

Of course the question comes to why. First off it has nothing to do with price. Milk in Canada has a fixed price coming from the farm, depending on what it's used for. Whether it's a big order or a small one, whether it's today or the first of March - the price is set.

Second has to do with shelf life. Of course milk doesn't last forever and this is especially true of raw, unpasteurized milk. It's required to be picked up from our farm within 72 hours. And then would need to be processed within a day or two. It can't just sit and wait.

Third challenge is storage. I said it's required to be picked up within 72 hours, but our farm & most others only have 48 hours worth of milk storage on farm. That's because milk is picked up every 48 hours. It would be an extra cost that would have to be accounted for.

The same is with tanker trucks. There are enough milk trucks to pick up every farm every 48 hours. But there isn't a fleet waiting for more. That would be an extra cost that no one has wanted to pay. So once it's picked up, it has to be unloaded within the day.

That brings us to processors. And I feel for all of them right now.
Before this started, demand was pretty constant. Tim Hortons would need a pretty steady amount of cream week to week. My Loblaws store would need a pretty steady amount of 2%.

Processors would be able to adapt to small increases or decreases. But what's happened over the last few weeks is nothing short of a absolute shock to the system. Plus, many are working with new rules of physical distancing for employees to make sure they stay healthy & operating

Figures out of the US (Cdn #'s should come soon) show increases through retail of 53% in milk, 84% in cheese, 127% for butter. All while food service demand collapsed.

Keep in mind food service wants buckets of sour cream, not tubs, or 10lb bags of shredded cheese, not packets. Think even cream where Tim's uses a big bag of cream through a SureShot machine, while you want 500ml at a time.

Those processing lines can't change overnight. It takes millions in new equipment and packaging to convert those. So you've got retail lines that can't keep up while food service lines are completely backed up or shut down.

Having processing lines just sitting waiting for this occassion would be another cost that no one wanted to cover. It would have been passed on to consumers that typically don't want to pay more than they have to.

Finally you've got retail logistics. If it took 2 truck loads a day to keep a grocery store stocked in February, all the extra demand means it now might take 3 or 4. That's more trucks. More drivers.

Unfortunately all that combined meant something have to break. In our business of milk, some raw milk had no where to go. So a few hundred farms out of the 3900 in Ontario were asked to dump 2 days worth of production. The next question is what about food banks?

It's a great question. But again we run into the challenge of it being raw and unpasteurized. A food bank can do nothing with a 40,000L tanker at its back door. They aren't processors.

If anyone knows of an available line that can pastueruize, process and package milk I'd love to hear from them. But all those lines are tied up filling orders for grocers. And foodservice lines aren't packaging in a usable form for food banks.

Fortunately, as dairy farmers in ON we're donating close to 100K litres each month to food banks. Not because of the crisis, but because hundreds of farms have done it for many years. That milk was donated last month, the month before and the month before that. It will continue.

We can do better though. But the food chain can't evolve overnight. @modernfarmer had a great thread on this subject. It's pinned on his profile so look it up & make sure you're following his story as a pig farmer.

Struggles in the food chain are going to continue over the next several weeks. We'll all do our best to cope, but know the struggles are real. Solutions aren't simple. Or cheap. They'll take a lot of work but they will come.

In the meantime, no matter where you are in the food chain, know how important your work is. And I hope your struggles are ones you can come out the other side from.
And of course if you need to talk, look up resources like Farm-Help lines, @domoreag or reach out it friends.

Good luck everyone.
Stay safe. Stay apart.
And keep buying Canadian.