Market-Wide Payment Scheme Not Part of Recommendations for Northeast Order

USDA's recommendations are based on testimony and evidence given at a public hearing held September 10-13, 2002, in Arlington, Va. IDFA Chief Economist Bob Yonkers, PhD, testified against the market-wide service payment proposal at that hearing. (For more details, click here to read a previous news article.)

USDA is recommending changes to various reporting and payment deadlines, as well as changes to the pooling standards of the Northeast order. The recommended amendments would:

• Establish year-round supply plant performance standards;
• Eliminate the split-plant provision;
• Create a standard for the number of days a dairy farmer's milk production must be delivered to a pool plant to qualify the rest of the dairy farmer's milk for diversion;
• Establish explicit limits on the amount of milk a pool plant may divert to non-pool plants;
• Exclude milk received by supply plants from producers not eligible to be pooled on the order from the total volume of milk used to satisfy supply plant performance standards;
• Prohibit the ability to pool the same milk on the order and on a market-wide pool administered by another government entity; and
• Grant authority to the market administrator to adjust the touch-base and diversion limit standards as market conditions warrant.

Posted March 29, 2004