Hearings on the Federal Milk Marketing Order which began last month are expected to continue through the end of this month. Dr. Roger Cryan, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says his organization is heavily involved in the process.

“This is the first hearing where AFBF has really taken a leading role on federal order policy. We’re in it to our elbows and more. It’s been a lot of work for Danny Munch and me to keep up with the armies of folks that other folks have brought to this thing, but I think we’re doing a pretty good job.”

He talks about the topics AFBF has testified on at the hearing.

“So far, we’ve testified in favor of Nationals Milk’s proposal to get rid of barrels from the survey because the barrel price has caused a lot of distortion in the markets and a lot of federal order problems. I testified in favor of a couple of our proposals, which are to add 640-pound blocks in unsalted butter to the survey because our members would like to see more products in the surveys to improve price discovery.”

Cryan says there is still more to come from the hearing.

“Some of the other things we’re really here about is to advocate for holding off on make-allowance increases until we can get the data in a USDA survey of processing plants to get their plant costs and their yields. It’s a slow process. We’re just in the beginning of the third of this thing. It’s expected to go until the end of September, maybe longer.”