Some Ky. dairy farmers cut by Dean Food get a lifeline - Entrepreneur Generations

"Just days before their contracts with Dean Foods run out, nine Kentucky dairy farmers met with an Ohio co-op, and made a handshake deal to sell their milk," Kate Talerico reports for the Courier Journal in Louisville. Nineteen small dairy farmers in Kentucky, and more than 80 others in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and three other states were told in late February that their milk procurement contracts with Dean Foods would be terminated effective July 15. Dean cut the small farmers' contracts because Walmart decided it would no longer buy Dean's milk for its Great Value house brand, and instead started its own milk production facility.

The offer of a year-long contract from Scioto Milk Producers of Ohio doesn't completely solve the nine farmers' worries: the co-op doesn't need as much milk as Dean did and so won't pay as much. The farmers will also have to pay more to ship the milk to the processing plant in Charleston, West Virginia.

One of the farmers, Dan Sammons, told Talerico that even though "Most of us will be losing money," the contract could allow them to stay in the dairy business until the market improves again.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2KCkYEA Some Ky. dairy farmers cut by Dean Food get a lifeline - Entrepreneur Generations

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