The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s wastewater treatment system has been handling increased volumes of milk, a spokesperson confirmed, though he couldn’t verify how much. Since-deleted videos on social media earlier this summer showed farmers pumping thousands of gallons of excess milk directly onto their fields.
The last time American farmers dumped milk en masse was during the early weeks of Covid-19, when the sudden closure of restaurants and schools threw off a delicate supply and demand balance. Unlike other supermarket staples that can halt the factory line when the market shifts, cows can’t just turn off their udders. Milk is highly perishable and requires expensive transportation, and farmers don’t have room to store it all themselves.
As supply rises, processors can’t keep up. About 90% of Wisconsin’s milk is made into cheese, and most of the plants are already filled to the brim. Labor shortages are making the issue worse, said Bob Cropp, professor emeritus and dairy marketing specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A sudden plant closure in Hastings, Minnesota, earlier this summer due to wastewater issues only exacerbated the issue.
As a result, prices for milk are tanking. Benchmark Class III milk futures, a type that’s used in cheese-making, recently hit the lowest since spring 2020. Cheese is also coming down. That’s starting to trickle down to grocery stores, with consmer prices for milk inching lower for three straight months, government data show. The next US CPI report will come out Wednesday.