Washington, D.C.
Thursday, December 17, 2009 -

Today, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) applauded the Department of Agriculture for their implementation of the new Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment (DELAP) program which will provide $290 million for loss assistance payments to eligible dairy producers.

The announcement comes on the heels of a letter Senator Specter sent to the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on Friday in which he urged the Department to move promptly to enact the program by the year’s end. The funding for the program was made possible by an amendment that Senator Specter supported in the 2010 Agricultural Appropriations Bill which was approved by Congress on October 8th.

“I am pleased that Secretary Vilsack has created this program to move this much-needed aid to our nation’s dairy farmers,” Senator Specter said. “This program is good news for the 7,600 dairy farms in my state of Pennsylvania; however, much more remains to be done. I will continue to work with my colleagues and the Secretary to address the challenges facing the dairy industry.”

"Through this program, eligible dairy producers will receive economic assistance that will help stabilize their operations during these tough economic times," said Vilsack. "I have personally heard from hundreds of struggling dairy farmers from all across our country who have been hit hard by declining prices over the past year, and now, we'll be able to offer them help."

According to the USDA, Milk prices have declined substantially through early-to-mid-2009, with the national price for milk averaging $16.80 per hundredweight (cwt.) in the fourth quarter of 2008 and averaging $12.23 per cwt. in the first quarter of 2009, a 27-percent decline. On average, the price U.S. dairy producers received for milk marketed in the summer of 2009 was about half of what it cost them to produce milk.

In the program, eligible dairy producers will receive a one-time direct payment based on the amount of milk both produced and commercially marketed by their operation during the months of February through July 2009. This information will be used to estimate a full year's production to calculate the payments.

Momentum for the milk payments grew, in part, during a roundtable that Senator Specter hosted in Washington, D.C. in July with stakeholders from Pennsylvania and USDA Undersecretary Jim Miller.