Before dairy producers panic that they’ll lose $350 million in government payments in 2011 due to this week’s federal budget agreement, they should relax. They weren’t going to get the money anyway.
The $350 million “cut” is what was appropriated in 2009 and paid out in 2010 for emergency payments--$60 million in cheese purchases and $290 million in direct farm payments. These emergency payments were not requested again this year, and there was never any expectation that the payments would be made.
But because the $350 million was spent out of the 2009 budget and won’t be spent in 2011, they can be counted as “savings” in the whacky world of Federal budget accounting. (The entire budget agreement is laced with such “savings.”)
Mandatory dairy programs, such as the Dairy Price Support Program, the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) Program and the Dairy Export Incentive Program (DEIP) are not affected by the budget cuts, says Chris Galen, National Milk Producer Federation spokesperson.
