Milk Monopoly? Yuma dairy farmer fights the power.

elchrist

He sells milk for half the price you pay. The feds want to stop him. Why?
Source: Chicago Tribune

YUMA, Ariz. -- Hein Hettinga is a dairy farmer but he doesn't spend his days milking cows.

Rather, Hettinga keeps a cell phone pressed to his ear to keep tabs on his empire of 15 dairy farms stretching from California to west Texas, including five massive farms in the desert east of Yuma.

But what distinguishes Hettinga from other large-scale dairy farmers is that he also bottles the milk from his Arizona farms and trucks it to stores in Arizona and Southern California. At one of them, Sam's Club in Yuma, two gallons of Hettinga's whole milk sell for $3.99.

That's the same price as a single gallon of whole milk in Chicago, which is second only to New Orleans in the cost of milk.

By controlling all stages of production, Hettinga says he can produce milk so efficiently that he and his customers can make a hefty profit at dirt-cheap prices. Such vertical integration, as it is known, is increasingly popular in agriculture as farmers and processors try to find ways to eliminate costs and increase revenues.

In the highly politicized world of dairy, efficiency could carry a price. Major dairy cooperatives and milk processors successfully persuaded federal regulators to write new rules that would prohibit the business practices that Hettinga has so successfully put in place.

Under the proposed regulations, Hettinga could continue to process his own milk only if he agrees to participate in a federally regulated pool of milk revenues, which would essentially require him to pay his competitors to stay in business. A bill that would have a similar effect is working its way through Congress.

Read more...

You need to pay your competitors to stay in business? That explains why dairy products are so damn expensive. But most importantly, why are soy-based dairy alternatives just as expensive, if not more?

TsutchiEsMaximus · Posted: 21 Feb 2006 05:11 PM Post subject:

why do'nt we get milk this cheap?......

this guy should go and help out with the oil crisis...find a way to make it cheaper .. Laughing

bemisnorris · Posted: 26 Feb 2006 03:23 PM Post subject:

Asesino Koolarrow · Posted: 26 Feb 2006 08:21 PM Post subject:

bemisnorris · Posted: 27 Feb 2006 12:27 PM Post subject: