If you buy milk under a farmstead contract, or you make cheese from your own herd, you've probably already seen the reminder in your inbox: the federal government's annual margin-support enrollment window for dairy producers closes in the first half of December. It is not a program most cheesemakers think of as "theirs" — it is written for the milk side of the business — but the margin it protects is the same margin that shows up, a few steps downstream, on your make sheet.
This has been a record year for milk prices, and members keep telling us the same thing: a record price on paper does not always mean a record margin in the ledger, because feed and energy costs climbed right alongside it. The enrollment window matters because it sets a floor. If the gap between the milk price and the feed cost falls below the level you selected, the program pays out. It does not fix your business plan for you, but it is one fewer thing you have to guess about heading into a year that, by every account we're hearing from members, is shaping up to be tighter than this one.
Why we're flagging it now
We are not in the business of walking members through federal paperwork line by line — that is between you and whoever manages your operation's enrollment. What we can do is connect the dots between this deadline and the advocacy work our Membership & Outreach Committee has been doing on dairy pricing reform more broadly. The formula behind these programs, and behind the base milk pricing that flows into your contracts, has been under review for longer than most of our members have been in business. It gets revisited slowly, through comment periods and coalition meetings, not through a single vote.
That is exactly why the federation keeps a standing coalition presence on dairy pricing reform. A margin-support program is a backstop; it is not a substitute for a pricing formula that reflects what it actually costs to keep milk moving and cheese aging in 2022. Members who have sat through the last few years of hay bills, energy bills, and freight surcharges are, frankly, the best-qualified people in the country to say what a fair formula should account for. If you have a story about a quarter where the milk price looked good and the margin didn't follow, we want to hear it — those stories are what our comment letters are built from, not abstractions.
What to do this week
Two things, in order of urgency. First, if enrollment applies to your operation, don't let the window close on you — check the date with whoever handles your program paperwork and confirm you're covered for the year ahead. Second, if you have five minutes and an opinion on pricing reform, send it to the Membership & Outreach Committee. We fold member input into the coalition's position statement every cycle, and specific numbers — your feed cost per hundredweight, your actual margin last quarter — carry more weight than a general complaint, however justified the complaint might be.
None of this is glamorous work. It will not show up on your cheese case or your holiday gift boxes. But the shape of next year's milk contract is being decided in exactly this kind of quiet enrollment window, and it is a lot easier to have an opinion about it now than to wish you had one in March.
If you want to talk through how this intersects with your own pricing, or you want to add your name to the pricing reform coalition letter, reach out to the Membership & Outreach Committee before the second week of December.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.