CWT Renewed for 2012/2013
The National Milk Producers Federation has voted to renew and continue the Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) program for 2012 and 2013. The assessment, however, has been reduced to 2¢/cwt and will only be used for international market development and export sales assistance.
There will no further whole herd buyouts under the new program. (From 2003 through 2010, 2,802 herds with nearly 507,000 cows were terminated through the herd buyout program. CWT officials estimate they removed 9.7 billion pounds of milk over those eight years.)
In order to continue the program, NMPF had set a membership goal of 70% of U.S. milk production participation. The final sign-up represents 70.1%, according to Chris Galen, CWT senior vice president of communications.
The membership list can be found here. In addition, individual dairy farmers can also sign-up and participate even though their cooperative or proprietary handler does not participate.
