While food shortages have increased dramatically, millions of pounds and gallons of food have been dumped or destroyed. According to Midwest Crop Report, one dairy alone has dumped over a half-a-million gallons of milk.
Golden “E” Dairy in West Bend, Wisconsin has been continuously dumping milk for nearly a month. The Elbe family was notified that they needed to begin dumping milk the evening of March 31st. “We were informed we needed to start dumping milk because of the oversupply of fluid milk in the market at the current time,” Ryan Elbe says. Since they began dumping, over 600,000 gallons of milk have went to waste.
When will the dumping come to an end? Elbe says he really has no idea. “We get a weekly schedule since we haul our own milk,” he says, “our latest schedule for the next seven days said ‘discard,’” meaning that the dumping will hit the one month mark come late April.
Even though the Elbe family is being paid for their dumped milk, the pain of seeing a product that you’ve worked so hard to produce go right down the drain is tough to grapple with. “We just kind of pretend that we’ve come to grips with it…we haven’t but we have,” says Ryan Elbe. He says that the family has had no choice but to accept the situation and push forward the best they can. “The milk is going to waste but we’re just going to pretend it’s not,” he explains. (source)