June 24, 1999

USDA expects to have payments to dairy farmers completed by the end of the month under a $200 million assistance program approved by Congress. Officials say the payment rate was calculated to spread payments more equitably among all dairy operations and not disadvantage smaller dairy farms.

The payments are being based on a dairy operation's production of milk in 1997 or 1998. Payments are limited to the first 26,000 hundredweight of production in the year selected. That payment rate is 22.47897 cents per hundredweight. All farmers who produced milk during the last quarter of calendar year 1998 were eligible to sign up for payments under the program.