I said earlier that the 2nd & 3rd order effects of this bug could end up being more serious than the bug itself. The disruption in the ‘Supply Chain’-Logistics– the business of moving things to where they need to be, can and is causing things like this to happen.

Wisconsin farmers forced to dump milk as coronavirus slams a fragile dairy economy.

About 7 o’clock Tuesday night, Golden E Dairy got the call that any dairy farmer would dread. They were being asked to dump 25,000 gallons of fresh milk a day because there was no place for it to go as the marketplace for dairy products has been gutted by the closure of restaurants, schools, hotels and food-service businesses.

An hour later, the family-run farm near West Bend opened the spigot and started flushing its milk into a wastewater lagoon — 220,000 pounds a day through next Monday.

It was surreal, said Ryan Elbe, whose parents, Chris and Tracey Elbe, started the farm in 1991 with about 80 cows and grew it into an operation that today milks 2,400.

“We thought this would never happen,” Elbe said. “Everybody’s rushing to the grocery store to get food, and we have food that’s literally being dumped down the drain.”

But the Wisconsin dairy industry has been dealt a harsh blow from the economy that’s been slammed by coronavirus shutdowns. About one-third of the state’s dairy products, mostly cheese, are sold in the food-service trade.

Dairy farmers, whose product is highly perishable, are seeing processing plants close or curb production, forcing them to flush their milk down the drain if there’s no other buyer.

“I think that a lot of milk will all of a sudden be dumped. Everyone across the industry is feeling distressed now,” said Julie Sweney, spokeswoman for FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative in Madison.

“Over the last several hours I have heard this is unfolding. There is definitely a strain on markets now. The whole consumption rate for milk is so much different than it was before COVID-19,” Sweney said.

“We need to figure this out now, not in the next couple of weeks,” Elbe said.

“I know many industries are experiencing hardship now. This is just the story of ours,” he added.

Normally, his family’s milk goes to a Kemp’s processing plant owned by Dairy Farmers of America. But that plant is full to the brim, as are many others across Wisconsin.

Some of the larger DFA members were asked to dump their milk this week because, as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, it could be monitored in their regulated wastewater lagoons.

“You can’t just dump milk in a field,” Elbe said.

There’s simply too much of it now, according to DFA based in Kansas City.

“This, in combination with the perishable nature of our product, has resulted in a need to dispose of raw milk on farms in some circumstances,” Kristen Coady, a DFA vice president, said in a statement provided to the Journal Sentinel.