LANSDOWNE, ONT -- Brian Smith has farmed all his life, and at Goldendale Farms north of Lansdowne, it’s chore time.
The Smiths milk around 85 to 90 cows a day, and their cows produce almost 80,000 litres of raw milk a month.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shut down businesses, farming continues, but the demand for diary products have seen a large decline in the past few weeks.
“Restaurants and commercial baker operations have shut down. Everybody’s going to the grocery store to buy milk. They are not going to restaurants,” said Smith.
With consumers buying more bag milk, the dairy processors can’t switch over fast enough to meet demand.
“The problem is that we need bag milk .. but we don’t have the processing facilities to shift the milk into those kind of products,” said Smith.
The Dairy Farmers of Ontario is a marketing group that represents over 3,800 dairy farmers in the province. They sent out a statement last week telling farmers they may have to start dumping raw milk if the demand continues to slow.
In the statement, CEO Cheryl Smith says “these unprecedented times have called for unprecedented measures within the dairy supply chain.”
“Disposing of milk is an extraordinary measure and one that Dairy Farmers of Ontario has only ever considered in emergency situations … last week we informed producers these measures would be necessary on a select and rotating basis.”
At Goldendale Farmers, Brian Smith says “it’s a perishable product, and we have to milk the cows and they have to be fed so they asked us to cut back production a little bit if we can.”
Smith was contacted by email about possibly dumping truckloads of milk.
“They said we could be notified a day or two ahead (of milk pickup) that our farm would be slated to dump milk.”
While the Smith’s haven’t had to dump any milk as of yet, they might have to in the coming weeks. And that total could be around 5,000 litres per dump.
“It may only be for one pickup but if we do the milk truck still comes, takes the sample of the milk and takes the weight so we get the credit for the litres shipped and then we’ll put in our manure pit,” said Smith.
When asked if there was anything else that could be done with the milk, Smith said no.
“It’s raw milk so we can’t donate it to food banks because it isn’t pasteurized.”
Milk has already been dumped in western Ontario and British Columbia and Smith says it’s only a matter of time before producers here in eastern Ontario follow suit.
“We don’t like to see if anywhere but if it comes here we’ll have to do it. That’s the way it is, we’re all in this together.”
“Nobody knows for sure when this (pandemic) will be all done. Hopefully if we keep social distancing the sooner we can get out of this. And it looks to me we haven’t hit the peak yet.”
