It happened in the cover of darkness, much like a fox slyly sneaking from tall grass into one of my farm’s henhouses and making off with a prized hen. After lots of squealing, the only evidence to see is the trail of feathers leading away.

But this time, the crime scene is the trail of dollars leading from the doors of the Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee room.

What I’m talking about here is Democrats stealing the milk money from Maine’s farmers at 3 a.m. on a dark Saturday morning. And I’m here to tell you that for the sake of our farmers, they better put it back.

There aren’t many sectors in our economy where price controls exist. Yet the dairy industry is one of them. In fact, the price you pay for a gallon of milk is determined long before it hits the supermarket cooler, since prices are fixed at both the wholesale and retail levels. But when prices don’t cover the cost to produce it, that’s when Maine farmers feel the squeeze.

However, that is also when government is supposed to step in to help. Yes, the government at both the state and federal levels has more of an impact on our dairy industry than you think.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Milk Marketing Orders system, which sets the price between dairy farmers and milk processors, regulates much of the nation’s milk supply. However, states such as Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Maine operate outside the FMMO system through our own regulatory systems.

Created in 1935 through the Maine Milk Control Law, the Maine Milk Commission is the regulatory body that sets the minimum price at which a gallon of milk can be sold in Maine for dairy product that does not enter the Boston Market FMMO. The commission’s rate-setting process is meant to provide stable pricing for both farmers and consumers alike.

Still, the cost to produce milk can vary from farm to farm and even from month to month depending upon many different factors. Last year’s hay crisis jeopardized feed prices across the region; and the cost to transport raw milk has risen sharply along with diesel fuel.

In addition, when you factor in the fact that if we can even find workers, Democrats want them to be able to unionize and earn more than we can pay them. It makes you wonder why Democrats have declared an all-out war on Maine’s farmers.

When the Legislature created the Dairy Stabilization Program — known as the “Tier Program” — through the passage of L.D. 1945 in 2004, Maine had already lost hundreds of dairy farms over the previous two decades and only 393 remained. The goal of the program was to cover cost fluctuations that could occur each month in order to preserve Maine’s remaining farms.

A 2011 review of the program showed it did have an effect. We had lost 19% of our dairy farms since the program’s inception, compared to 52% of dairy farms in Vermont and 46% in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the attrition continued and today there are only 145 farms operating in Maine.

The commission did a study last year to determine whether the Dairy Stabilization Program was capturing the real cost of Maine’s milk production. When averaging the four different tiers of farms, the 2023 Cost of Production Study found that the actual cost to produce milk for dairy farms across Maine was about $35 million in the red.

You read that right. The current prices being paid to farmers under the Maine Milk Pricing Tier System are falling short. That means our farmers are losing money on every gallon they produce.

The proposed funding of $8.9 million in the governor’s supplemental budget, about 25% of the shortfall, was to start plugging that cost gap. The plan was to increase it incrementally over the next few biennium budgets to make farmers whole. However, the decision by Democrats on the Appropriations Committee to cut that funding in half puts our farmers in jeopardy.

Democrats stole the milk money to fund their other pet projects. They need to put it back before we lose what’s left of our dairy farms.

Senator Russell Black represents District 5, which includes communities in Franklin, Kennebec and Somerset counties. He is the Senate Republican Lead for the Legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee and the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee.

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