Dairy industries in Eau Claire, Wisconsin offer a wide range of services to their customers. From bulk milk weighers and samplers, butter machines and sorters, cheese machines and sorters, milk and cream testers, pasteurization certificates, HTST payments, and laboratory services, they have it all. June is an especially important month for the dairy industry in Wisconsin, and this year is no exception. Gross Auto of Neillsville, a car dealership, is donating butter and cheese to the local community. Unfortunately, many farmers are leaving the dairy industry due to the difficulty of making a profit with milk.
To address this issue, a national trade association of dairy cooperatives is working to update the countywide milk pricing and sales system. A recent cyber attack on a Wisconsin dairy processor has highlighted the risk of such attacks against food companies. Wisconsin cheese makers produce 25% of the country's cheeses and lead the nation in producing 928 million pounds of specialty cheeses a year. In terms of potential changes in dairy prices in the next federal farm bill, Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden said last month that the current pricing system may result in the average farmer being paid less for their milk than it costs to produce it. Both Nicholson and Lyon agree that increasing subsidies would have one of the biggest impacts on milk prices in Wisconsin, since much of the state's milk goes to cheese production.
