Industry discussion surrounds a docket’s worth of changes to the Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMO), and we feel like it’s high time that we weighed in.

The USDA hearing on pricing formulas reconvened November 27, and the Jacoby team can’t help but feel that much of the hearings will amount to wasted or misplaced effort.

On this episode of The Milk Check, recorded in mid-November, a group from throughout the company discusses the potential changes that might help dairies with ongoing profitability problems. Then, they share their thoughts on the contents of the hearing so far.

T3: Hello everybody, and welcome to The Milk Check podcast. Today, we are going to tackle the famous, or maybe rather infamous, subject of federal order reform. I think you'll find listening to our discussion, that you'll find us a little bit more ambivalent about the process than maybe you'd expect from a group that is experts in marketing milk and the federal order system. But I'll let the conversation speak for itself, as we talk about the different things that the federal order hearing is trying to tackle and what we think should be done. And hopefully, it'll be helpful to everybody. I look forward to discussing it further, when they finally come out with their recommendations for how the federal order needs to be changed.

Dad, obviously, the federal order hearing is going on. And my suggestion is the reality is the path we're going down really isn't going to change a lot, and maybe that's what we should discuss is how some of these changes aren't going to have a big effect because the market is going to change to that. Things like, okay, they're going to change the make allowances. How much of an effect are changing the make allowances really going to have on the farmer's milk price?

Ted Jr: Zero.

T3: That's my point.

Ted Jr: The real issue is qualification and not the classified pricing system. Instead of having bottling plant A, for example, responsible for balancing, you now kick milk back to somebody else, usually a co-op who has a butter powder plant and you give them the responsibilities for balancing and then of course you pay for that with an overrated premium.

And the alternative would be, in my view at least, to weaken the minimum price requirements and do it in such a way, and I'm not sure you're going to get out of the box with something like this, but do it in such a way that you can transfer some of the balancing requirements back to the bottling plant so that they can run sales on milk so we can get some of our customers back. Something that promotes marketing and allows at least a portion of the balancing to be transferred to the plant, I think would be beneficial. Is that going to happen? No, they're not going to touch that With a 10-foot pole, the minimum price requirements are the key to qualification, and so that's where the thing meets the wall. In the meantime, our Class I sales continue to decline.

Anna: I think the biggest issue for me is that Class I is completely hamstrung by how everything is based off of their sales, their qualification, their everything else. It means that we've talked about them not being able to be innovative before, just how much it really sticks them in a certain spot where they can't do anything new. I don't really have a major problem with qualification. I think when you change those provisions, you end up devaluing the whole pool, which is kind of against the point, right? But my biggest issue is that we're basing all of this on Class I and quite frankly, they're not the most difficult customer anymore. Class III is in many cases way more difficult.

Gus: How is Class III more difficult? And I look at this knowingly from the standpoint that cheese plants tend to take a more consistent volume of milk and therefore they're an easier customer to serve. But why do you say that?

Anna: I don't think they're as easy as they used to be.