Bishcroft Farm LLC

Is your local merchant limiting how much milk you can purchase? Talk to the manager, and ask him or her to contact corporate headquarters and the Department of ...Agriculture, as the Department has advised AGAINST milk sales limits. To help you understand the milk issue in PA, please read this other post: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2679806232141361&id=622074637914541

Dear Walmart and any other retail chain doing this, Dairy farmers across the nation are being forced to dump millions of pounds of milk down their drains. Food ...banks, pantries, and charitable organizations are screaming for milk. Store shelves are being cleared and families who need it the most are going without. This is NOT a toilet paper issue. This is NOT a hoarding issue. Milk is a perishable product and quickly replenished in a very short amount of time. The flow is continuous and steadfast. It is dependable and it moves fast! We DO NOT have a milk shortage. Stop limiting families, food banks, and crippling our farms by stalemating a vital part of our nation’s food supply. STOP LIMITING MILK PURCHAES. There is plenty of milk. We will not run out of milk. Farmers are still farming. Truckers are still hauling, and processing plants (here in NH at least) are waiting. How much more perfectly nutritious food would you like to pour down the drain, Walmart? Sincerely, STOP LIMITING MILK

UPDATED: I was going to remain silent on this, at least until I could source and sort out a more detailed story... but this is unfolding rapidly in Pennsylvani...a (and likely elsewhere) and my phone is getting calls and texts and emails by the dozen... and so I believe people -- especially industry and governmental leaders -- need to be aware. Bottlers are processing and needing more milk for retail gallon and half gallon milk sales, but other dairy product manufacturers are "said" to be taking less milk and having difficulty transitioning from foodservice and institutional product mix to retail consumer packaged goods product mix. As may or may not be happening elsewhere in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, at least 10 truckloads of whole milk were dumped in manure pits in my county and the adjoining county because processors say they have too much milk and too much cream. PA lost 45,000 cows, hundreds of farms, and 7% less milk is produced in PA today than in 2018. USDA says class one fluid milk bottlers were taking "extraordinary" orders for milk in the Northeast and that the demand was "haywire" in Mid-atlantic and southeastern states for week ending March 20 (Nielson said fluid milk sales were up 32% over year ago nationwide, retail butter up 85%, retail cheese up 40-60% that week). USDA says fluid milk sales pulled back a bit for the week ending March 27 compared to the previous week -- BUT STILL DESCRIBED AS "EXPONENTIALLY HIGHER" THAN A YEAR AGO. USDA says all this fluid milk bottling is pushing too much cream into the market and that butter-makers are operating hand to mouth on store packaged 'print' butter production while shoving all the cream to bulk butter production for inventory (bulk butter is what foodservice and institutional trade buy), while the industry is asking federal and state governments to buy this bulk dairy to distribute. Meanwhile, Whole Milk is always the first type of milk to be empty on shelves, it was not well stocked BEFORE COVID-19 as it is in highest demand, and this is even more the case now. Why not keep the cream in the milk and bottle more Whole Milk? Answer: the more fat that is sold in Class One (in the jug), the more fair the price that has to be paid to farmers. Meanwhile, milk on farms all around me is being picked up by trucks over the weekend and this morning and being directly dumped into manure pits over the weekend and this morning instead of going to nearby bottlers. Who is supplying our bottlers? Is it coming from other areas where product manufacturing is down? Is our fluid milk market "balancing" out of area manufacturing plants that are pulling back? These are difficult times, and to me, it looks as though our farm milk pricing system is not only upside down and backwards, but completely broken in terms of stabilizing regionally secure food systems. My gut insight? My gut says there has been a month-end rush to move milk between orders and dump milk produced in this milkshed to hurry up and get some salvage milk volume reported on the Northeast Federal Order Pool for March because Class I utilization has been crazy high in March, and there is less manufacturing plant contribution to pay the price that would then be owed to farmers as a result. (Northeast Federal Order flexibilities were published allowing milk to be used from OUT of area and to POOL milk that is dumped on farms IN the area, see link in comments below). Put this alongside the liquidity concerns as the nation's largest milk bottler is in bankruptcy court since November with bids to sell 57 plants due today and a sale hearing set for Friday 4/3 with FIVE of those plants located in PA or receiving PA milk in NJ. Yes, COVID-19 is driving disruption; however, the biggest disruption is that consumers have been unleashed from the dietary guidelines even as the Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee that has been meeting since 2019 gets ready to issue even MORE restrictions on dietary fat from animal protein products like whole milk, butter, cheese and meat. Wake up industry and government... consumers are unleashed and they are reading the science that you are choosing to ignore and screening out of the review process. See more

Is your local merchant limiting how much milk you can purchase? Talk to the manager, and ask him or her to contact corporate headquarters and the Department of ...Agriculture, as the Department has advised AGAINST milk sales limits. To help you understand the milk issue in PA, please read this other post: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2679806232141361&id=622074637914541

Dear Walmart and any other retail chain doing this, Dairy farmers across the nation are being forced to dump millions of pounds of milk down their drains. Food ...banks, pantries, and charitable organizations are screaming for milk. Store shelves are being cleared and families who need it the most are going without. This is NOT a toilet paper issue. This is NOT a hoarding issue. Milk is a perishable product and quickly replenished in a very short amount of time. The flow is continuous and steadfast. It is dependable and it moves fast! We DO NOT have a milk shortage. Stop limiting families, food banks, and crippling our farms by stalemating a vital part of our nation’s food supply. STOP LIMITING MILK PURCHAES. There is plenty of milk. We will not run out of milk. Farmers are still farming. Truckers are still hauling, and processing plants (here in NH at least) are waiting. How much more perfectly nutritious food would you like to pour down the drain, Walmart? Sincerely, STOP LIMITING MILK

UPDATED: I was going to remain silent on this, at least until I could source and sort out a more detailed story... but this is unfolding rapidly in Pennsylvani...a (and likely elsewhere) and my phone is getting calls and texts and emails by the dozen... and so I believe people -- especially industry and governmental leaders -- need to be aware. Bottlers are processing and needing more milk for retail gallon and half gallon milk sales, but other dairy product manufacturers are "said" to be taking less milk and having difficulty transitioning from foodservice and institutional product mix to retail consumer packaged goods product mix. As may or may not be happening elsewhere in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, at least 10 truckloads of whole milk were dumped in manure pits in my county and the adjoining county because processors say they have too much milk and too much cream. PA lost 45,000 cows, hundreds of farms, and 7% less milk is produced in PA today than in 2018. USDA says class one fluid milk bottlers were taking "extraordinary" orders for milk in the Northeast and that the demand was "haywire" in Mid-atlantic and southeastern states for week ending March 20 (Nielson said fluid milk sales were up 32% over year ago nationwide, retail butter up 85%, retail cheese up 40-60% that week). USDA says fluid milk sales pulled back a bit for the week ending March 27 compared to the previous week -- BUT STILL DESCRIBED AS "EXPONENTIALLY HIGHER" THAN A YEAR AGO. USDA says all this fluid milk bottling is pushing too much cream into the market and that butter-makers are operating hand to mouth on store packaged 'print' butter production while shoving all the cream to bulk butter production for inventory (bulk butter is what foodservice and institutional trade buy), while the industry is asking federal and state governments to buy this bulk dairy to distribute. Meanwhile, Whole Milk is always the first type of milk to be empty on shelves, it was not well stocked BEFORE COVID-19 as it is in highest demand, and this is even more the case now. Why not keep the cream in the milk and bottle more Whole Milk? Answer: the more fat that is sold in Class One (in the jug), the more fair the price that has to be paid to farmers. Meanwhile, milk on farms all around me is being picked up by trucks over the weekend and this morning and being directly dumped into manure pits over the weekend and this morning instead of going to nearby bottlers. Who is supplying our bottlers? Is it coming from other areas where product manufacturing is down? Is our fluid milk market "balancing" out of area manufacturing plants that are pulling back? These are difficult times, and to me, it looks as though our farm milk pricing system is not only upside down and backwards, but completely broken in terms of stabilizing regionally secure food systems. My gut insight? My gut says there has been a month-end rush to move milk between orders and dump milk produced in this milkshed to hurry up and get some salvage milk volume reported on the Northeast Federal Order Pool for March because Class I utilization has been crazy high in March, and there is less manufacturing plant contribution to pay the price that would then be owed to farmers as a result. (Northeast Federal Order flexibilities were published allowing milk to be used from OUT of area and to POOL milk that is dumped on farms IN the area, see link in comments below). Put this alongside the liquidity concerns as the nation's largest milk bottler is in bankruptcy court since November with bids to sell 57 plants due today and a sale hearing set for Friday 4/3 with FIVE of those plants located in PA or receiving PA milk in NJ. Yes, COVID-19 is driving disruption; however, the biggest disruption is that consumers have been unleashed from the dietary guidelines even as the Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee that has been meeting since 2019 gets ready to issue even MORE restrictions on dietary fat from animal protein products like whole milk, butter, cheese and meat. Wake up industry and government... consumers are unleashed and they are reading the science that you are choosing to ignore and screening out of the review process. See more