After hearing from seed manufacturers and hog producers in Ankeny, Iowa, last week, Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney will meet with another agricultural group seeking her ear: New York’s dairy farmers.
According to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the antitrust chief will be traveling to upstate New York later this month to talk about anti-competitive conduct in the dairy industry.
The session, slated for March 29 at Genesee Community College in Batavia, is separate from a series of workshops the Justice Department and USDA are conducting this year on concentration in poultry, dairy, livestock and other agricultural markets.
Varney also traveled to Vermont last September at the behest of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to speak with dairy farmers about the low price of milk.
Dairy farmers and other agricultural producers have complained that the prices they are paid have decreased more than retail prices for the products.
Varney is making the trip at Schumer’s request, according to WICZ, a Binghamton, N.Y., television station. “For too long farmers have been receiving rock-bottom prices for their product, while prices have not dropped commensurately for consumers at the stores,” Schumer said. “It just doesn’t add up.”
