AUGUSTA – More than 100 dairy farmers streamed before lawmakers during a public forum on Wednesday, making their case for the state’s milk subsidy program, which is facing extensive cuts.

Plummeting milk prices and state budget deficits have drained the fund, leaving farmers out to dry.

“We need stability and a can-do attitude,” said Jay Roebuck, a dairy farmer from Turner. “This is not a time to make this program weaker; it’s time to make it stronger. It’s a program that works; it’s not a dead-end.”

Under what’s known as the milk tier program, farmers are guaranteed a certain price for their milk. When the milk price, which is set nationally based on world markets, falls below the state-guaranteed rate, farmers are paid the difference. Funds for the program come from a handling fee assessed on fluid milk and the state’s General Fund.

The guaranteed milk price is based on estimates of how much it takes a dairy farmer in Maine to break even, not make a profit.

Members of the Legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee say the fund is currently $5 million short of what is needed. The committee is supposed to report back to the Appropriations Committee by March 1 with a plan to cut the milk-subsidy program or find the money to support it.

Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, a dairy farmer, said a revenue bond paid for by the dairy industry may be a way to avoid cutting the program.

“It’s a tough issue for me personally and as a legislator,” said Nutting, who is the Senate chairman on the Agriculture Committee. “I’m trying to wear two hats.”

Many of the farmers who testified said the program was critical to keeping Maine’s dairy business running.

“We don’t have to make money, we just have to be able to somehow or other pay our bills,” said Ralph Caldwell, a dairy farmer from Turner. “And at the price of milk, it can’t be done.”

Sportsmen would also be affected if the program were cut, Caldwell said. He used this weekend’s One Lunger vintage snowmobile race in Turner as an example. The race will take place on his family’s land and is expected to raise between $16,000 and $20,000, he said.

“We get nothing out of this,” he said. “Besides that, we lose the alfalfa on this land that they are running over. We are making a contribution and we’re delighted to, but it’s got to come from somewhere. Really, all of us need the support.”

About 93 percent of open land in Androscoggin County is there because of agriculture, Nutting said.

Other farmers said they might have to start charging people to use their land recreationally if they couldn’t make ends meet.

David Farmer, spokesman for Gov. John Baldacci, said the governor was scheduled to meet this week with the commissioner of agriculture and Sen. Bruce Bryant, D-Oxford, to discuss the options available for funding the program.

Bryant is the Senate chairman of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee and also served on a state milk task force.

Many at the forum hoped that part of the stimulus money headed to the state could help save the program, but Farmer was skeptical of that possibility.

“This is not a blank check; it does not answer every prayer,” he said. “But (Baldacci) is committed to trying to help Maine’s dairy farmers.”