MILC Payments Could Start in February
Source: Rob Vandenheuvel, California Milk Producers Council
If you haven’t taken a look at your dairy’s Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) lately, it may be time to pull them out of the files.
According to the latest projections from economists at the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), we are approaching some months that may generate a payment. According to the NMPF website, payments may be generated under the MILC program in February, March and July of this year.
The latest projections (as of January 10th) are:
February 2012 $.0195
March 2012 $.0713
July 2012 $.0256
As of the latest projection, all other months in the current fiscal year are projected to have no payment.
If these projections hold true, March 2012 may be a month you want to consider as your “start month” under the program. As a reminder, when there is a month with no payment, that month does not affect your production limit. So
using the current projection as an example: If your dairy produces less than 2,985,000 in a month, and you sign up for March, but there is no payment in April, May or June, you
can still take advantage of the payment in July on whatever production remains under the 2,985,000 lbs. production limit.
If your dairy produces less than 995,000 lbs per month (roughly a 500-cow dairy producing 65 lbs/cow/day), you are able to collect MILC payments on at least 3 months’ worth of production. If that’s the case, the current numbers indicate that you may want to consider signing up for all three months. However, these projectionschange weekly, as projected milk prices and feed costs move up and down each week. So what’s projected to occur at this point in time isn’t necessarily what those projections will look like next week or next month.
