Annotated and Expanded Minutes of the Milk Marketing Policy Meeting

The July 18, 2006 meeting at the University of Connecticut continues an ongoing investigation of the Northeast fluid milk prices by universities, state and local officials, cooperatives and farmers. There was a morning and afternoon session. Dairy farmers and state legislators explicitly charged the group of economists that met in the morning session to discuss and develop strategies to raise farm level milk prices in the Northeast. Then after lunch the economists reported to a larger group of farmers and legislator, and other interested parties. At 10:30 am, Professor Ronald Cotterill met with Robert Wellington, Corporate Economist for Agri-Mark; Edward Gallagher, Corporate Economist for Dairylea/DMS and Carmen Ross, a former federal milk market order executive and for the past 15 years a consultant on over-order pricing regulations. Mr. Ross wrote the operating rules for the Regional Cooperative Marketing Agency (RCMA) in the 1980s and the Northeast Dairy Compact in the 1990s. The group discussed the following milk pricing options: overorder pricing by a marketing agency-in-common of the Northeast milk marketing cooperatives, the State of Maine fee revenue program and the Maine target price payment program for dairy farmers, the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board, the New York price gouging law, and the price collar and fair share pricing programs proposed by the University of Connecticut.