We've told members all year to read the fine print on relief programs before assuming they don't apply, and this week's update is a good example of why. The federal direct-payment program covering pandemic-related losses added close to five dozen newly eligible commodities this week, and the application window moved from an earlier August close to a date in mid-September.
For members whose operation is exclusively cheese, the milk-side calculation hasn't changed — it's still built off a producer's certified first-quarter production, with an adjustment for anything dumped during the worst weeks of spring. What's changed is who else now qualifies at all.
Who this update actually reaches
The commodity expansion matters most to members running a mixed operation — a farmstead that sells eggs or produce alongside its cheese, a creamery with a small flock or orchard on the side. Several categories that weren't in scope when the program launched in the spring are now covered, and for an operation where cheese is only part of the income picture, that can change the answer to "does this apply to me" from no to yes.
It's easy to have looked at this program back when it launched, seen your farm's secondary product wasn't on the list, and mentally filed the whole thing under "not for us." If that's what happened on your end, it's worth a second look now rather than assuming the spring answer still holds.
The part that actually slows members down
The question our advocacy committee hears most isn't about eligibility, it's about documentation. The program wants a specific, certified production figure for a specific quarter, and for a lot of small operations that number is scattered across a milk hauler's pickup receipts, a handwritten log, and whatever the creamery's own records show — not sitting in a clean spreadsheet ready to submit. Reconstructing that under deadline pressure is a worse experience than doing it now, while there's still runway before the mid-September close.
If you haven't started pulling that documentation together, this week is the time, not the final week of the window. A milk hauler's cooperative can usually reconstruct pickup volumes faster than you'd expect if you ask early, and a clean, certifiable production number is the one thing an application can't move past without.
Members who ship through a cooperative rather than bottling or making everything themselves have raised a separate wrinkle: the certified production figure the program wants isn't always the same number that shows up on a co-op settlement statement, especially if your payment includes quality premiums, hauling deductions, or a component-pricing adjustment layered on top of raw volume. Untangling "how much milk did I actually produce in the first quarter" from "what did I get paid for it" takes an extra step that a lot of members don't expect until they're mid-application.
If that's your situation, call your cooperative's member services line before you start the paperwork rather than after you get stuck on a field you can't fill in. Most cooperatives have already fielded this exact question dozens of times this year and can generate the production-only figure directly, without you having to back it out of a settlement statement by hand. That call takes ten minutes and avoids an afternoon of frustration later.
If your situation still falls into a gap this expanded list doesn't cover — and a few members have told us exactly that this month — tell our advocacy committee specifically what's missing and why. A concrete example from an actual operation is what gives a future comment period something real to point to, which is the same pattern that got the relief-loan terms loosened back in June: members naming the exact gap in plain language, not a policy brief.
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.