According to experts, the price of milk could rise if laws are passed that further restrict illegal immigrants from working, because their labor is crucial to ensuring dairy farms in the United States are productive.
The Idaho Dairymen’s Association estimates that 90 percent of the state’s local dairy workers are foreign-born. Nationally, this number is closer to 51 percent, according to A Texas A&M Survey from 2015, with most academics agreeing that most of them probably have no legal status.
Meanwhile, more and more Republicans at the state level want to ban any business from operating if they are caught hiring illegal immigrants. Nationally, former President Donald Trump has said he wants to deport 15 million people.
The same Texas A&M study states that completely eliminating migrant workers would cause milk prices to increase by 90.4 percent.
Pete Wiersma, president of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, said The New York Times the consequences of getting rid of these workers would be catastrophic.
A rise in milk prices would hit the US hard, as most citizens consider dairy a staple of their daily diet
“I don’t think there will be any milk,” Wiersma said. “I just don’t think we can get it done.”
A price increase would hit the US hard, as most citizens consider dairy a staple of their daily diet.
For example, China consumes about 15 percent of what Americans consume per capita Fortune.
A 90 percent increase in milk prices would resemble a similar shock to eggs during the worst of the pandemic-induced inflation.
In the past year alone, the average price for a dozen Grade A eggs in the U.S. has risen 85 percent, from just over $2 to $3.82, according to the report Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, according to those who produce milk for a living, the dairy industry has unique limitations.
A man named only as Peter, who runs a dairy farm in southern Idaho, told The Times that he already operates on tight margins and relies heavily on his employees — 90 percent of whom he believes were born in Mexico.
He said the price of everything in America has gone up except milk. It’s a dream for the consumer, but a nightmare for him.
The farm value of milk has fallen since the 1970s when adjusted for inflation, putting pressure on dairy producers (Photo: A worker looks at cows on a dairy farm in Argentina)
During the pandemic, costs for Peter skyrocketed and they never came back down to earth.
Fuel tank fittings that cost him about $2,000 in 2014 could now cost him $13,000. Technicians who used to charge $60 an hour to repair his farm equipment now charge $95 an hour.
Yet the farm value of milk has actually fallen since the 1970s, when adjusted for inflation.
Peter said the retail price for a hundred pounds of Class III milk — the kind used to make yogurt and cheese — was about $15.50 in the spring.
That’s roughly $3 more than forty years ago, or actually a 55 percent drop in real value.
Andrew Novakovic, an expert on dairy economics from Cornell University, said milk prices have ranged from as low as $11.66 to as high as $25.46 over the past five years.
Overall, the price trend is downward, according to Novakovic. And every time the price drops below $18, Peter says he’s running his business at a loss.
Because milk, like eggs, is a commodity, Peter has no control over how much he can charge for his dairy. Like every other dairy farmer, he sells his milk through a cooperative, which then sends a truck twice a day to remove 75,000 pounds of milk from its storage tanks.
Cows are seen fencing at a dairy farm in Boise, Idaho
Peter will only know how much he will earn a few weeks later.
“We are not price makers,” he said. ‘We are price takers.’
He has figured out ways to keep his head above water. He has saved money by building fences from recycled oil pipes, and he hedges against the price of milk on futures markets.
None of this, however, would be enough if all of his foreign labor were torn away from him – either through mass deportation or more restrictive labor laws.
Under current legislation, Peter only needs to take a cursory glance at his employees’ work documents. According to him, that is sufficient, as long as there is a citizen service number.
In February, Republican Idaho State Representative Jordan Redman tried to change that bill H-510which would allow the state’s attorney general to revoke the business licenses of anyone found to be employing illegal workers.
The bill would also allow ordinary citizens to alert the attorney general to companies they suspect are using illegal labor.
Redman told The Times that his priority with the bill was to level the playing field for companies that don’t hire illegal immigrants, who would normally pay higher wages for natural-born workers.
Dorothy Moon, the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Idaho, wrote a column in an Idaho newspaper last year arguing that immigrant workers were dragging down the wages of U.S.-born workers.
“I don’t have a lot of dairies on my neck,” Redman said.
He said he was surprised when many of his colleagues opposed the bill, which ultimately never came to a vote.
In March, Redman, along with nine other representatives, succeeded in passing bill H-753 through the House of Representatives. It stepped up enforcement against illegal immigrants, but was never voted on in the Senate.
Other Republicans statewide have shared their thoughts on the issue, angering dairy farmers.
This includes Dorothy Moon, the chair of the Republican Party of Idaho, who wrote a column for the local Twin Falls newspaper, The Times-News, in 2023.
In it, she said: “Wherever there is a reliance on immigrants to fill the workforce, pay for domestic workers, including young workers who have recently graduated, falls dramatically.”
She added: “Wherever immigrants are needed to fill the workforce, social spending increases.”
A retired dairy farmer named Terry Gartner wrote an angry slam in the same newspaper a month later.
“If you remove these workers, you, Dorothy, and the Republican leaders will need to buy a pair of rubber boots, work clothes, a wetsuit, and gloves, and get ready to go to work in a cowshed!” he wrote.
Philip Watson, left, and Hernan Tejeda, right, are economic experts from the University of Idaho who said cracking down on immigrant labor will only hurt the state
Philip Watson, an economist at the University of Idaho’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, told The Times that legislation and policy ideas from Republicans to prevent illegal immigrants from working won’t help Idaho.
Watson and his colleague Hernan Tejeda conducted multiple studies showing that the dairy industry brought $10.7 billion to Idaho in 2020.
In a 2012 study, Watson estimated that if Idaho were to cut its less-skilled foreign workforce in half, the state’s GDP would drop by $905 million.
In 2024, he said this number would only increase.
He added that dairy farms generated $155 million in state and local taxes in 2020, compared to $90 million in 2012.
And while Idaho’s dairy farms employ only 4,400 people, Watson and Tejeda say these farms directly support 30,600 other jobs in milk processing and other related businesses.
So if the dairy industry were to leave Idaho, it would have a downstream effect on schools and restaurants across the state.
“People have been seeing this for decades,” Watson said. “If the coal mine in West Virginia or the steel mill in Pittsburgh closes, it’s not just the plant and the factory workers that are affected. They are entire communities.’