It's Tough Being a Dairy Farmer Right Now

America's dairy farmers have been having a tough couple of years. There's a glut of milk on the market, and prices are low.Wisconsin's dairypeople seem especially put out. They've persuaded one of their U.S. senators, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, to introduce legislation that "would require non-dairy products made from nuts, seeds, plants, and algae to no longer be mislabeled with dairy terms such as milk, yogurt or cheese." And now a small group that lost its Canadian buyers for a specialized product (ultra-filtered milk used in making cheese and yogurt) have gotten President Donald Trump to launch a trade skirmish on their behalf.One obvious reason for dairies' struggles is what Baldwin was out to slow down: the rise of almond milk and its ilk. Almond milk sales rose 250 percent from 2011 through 2015, according to Nielsen. Meanwhile, the decline in breakfast-cereal eating has presumably also been a factor depressing consumption of all kinds of milk. So why are dairy farmers so cranky, especially in Wisconsin? It seems largely due to the maddening nature of farming: When conditions are just right, allowing you to produce a lot, it means they're probably just right for lots of other people, too. Milk production went up at a healthy pace in 2015 and 2016. Milk prices went down. It's something happening all over the place in agriculture right now. There's a corn glut. There's a wheat glut. And there's a dairy glut. But if you look at the trajectory of milk prices over the years, this looks more like a cyclical downturn than the end of the world.