Good morning, my name is James Vanblarcom, and I am a dairy producer from Northeastern Pennsylvania in Bradford County. My family and I manage a one hundred cow dairy that we have owned and operated since 1974. I want to thank the Committee for providing the opportunity for me to give you a brief Pennsylvania producer's perspective on how national dairy policy has been effecting my operation and the Pennsylvania dairy industry as a whole.
Agriculture is Pennsylvania's leading industry and dairy is the leading segment of that industry.
The economic impact of the Pennsylvania dairy industry is huge. The total value of milk produced in the state amounted to 1.73 billion dollars in 1998. We are the fourth leading dairy producing state in the nation. While Pennsylvania's dairy industry continues to maintain a slow rate of growth in total milk production through greater producer efficiencies, our dairy farm numbers, cow numbers, and total market share of the nation's dairy production continues to shrink. We have approximately 9,900 dairy farms in Pennsylvania producing 10.8 billion pounds of milk.