The partial government shutdown is now in week five. Impacts continue to be felt in numerous sectors, including Idaho’s dairy industry.
The CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, Rick Naerebout, says the state’s dairy sector is currently getting by. However, he says trouble is on the horizon if the shutdown keeps going.
“Some of things we’re going to start to see is an inability to use the safety net programs that were just put in place by the new farm bill – revenue protection and other insurance policies,” Naerebout says. “And we’re also going to lack some transparency into what’s happening in our markets because we’re not going to have the USDA reports that help us understand what’s happening in terms of milk production and products being produced.”
As Naerebout points out, the shuttering of parts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is what’s hitting the dairy industry. That agency reopened several Farm Service Agency offices for just three days to help farmers. For dairy producers, that brief window allowed them to sign up for tariff mitigation payments to offset damage done by the Trump Administration’s trade disputes with China and Mexico.
“It’s cash-in-hand at a time where our dairymen are losing money because costs are higher than the value of milk, so anything helps,” says the Dairymen Association executive.
With no end in sight – and parts of the USDA closed – Naerebout fears consumer confidence in dairy will start to erode as the public wonders about the thoroughness of agricultural inspections.
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