template

U.S. Rep. Scott Murphy, D-Glens Falls, was one of the signatories of a letter urging the House Appropriations Committee to include $350 million for struggling dairy farmers.

Dairy farmers around the country and here in New York continue to suffer from low wholesale milk prices of less than $12 a hundredweight, or 100 pounds of milk. Many farmers have had trouble paying off debt, bills and aren’t able to turn a profit during this downturn in the price.

Congressional and state lawmakers have proposed a variety of solutions and this $350 million is the latest. From Murphy’s release:

“On Monday, Congressman Scott Murphy (NY-20) joined 39 of his House colleagues in sending a letter to the House Committee on Appropriations expressing their support for the recently-approved $350 million dairy amendment to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) budget included in the Senate version of the FY2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill (S.1406).

“The Sanders-Udall amendment included in S. 1406 provides the USDA with much-needed funds to provide farmers with additional support to weather the current dairy price crisis. Addressed to the Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro and Ranking Members Jerry Lewis and Jack Kingston, the letter urges the conferees to retain the Sanders-Udall amendment in the final FY2010 Agriculture Appropriations conference report.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 2:38 pm and is filed under The Wash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.