Coming to a fertilizer pit near you.

Coming to a fertilizer pit near you.

The 400 dairy producers of the St. Albans Co-op Creamery increased production by two-percent this year, but now the product is being dumped by the truckload as market saturation is tanking prices. [...] While the Co-op creamery could not provide an estimate of how many gallons of skim milk have been dumped, Agri-Mark officials put their group's figure in the hundreds of thousands. They say converting its product is better than being left without a market, and estimate 95-percent of their product is still being shipped and sold despite dumps. "There's so much milk around that there's people undercutting other people, other co-ops, other milk handlers with cheaper milk," DiMento said. "It's really put the entire industry in quite the tailspin."

[Vermont Deputy Agriculture Secretary Diane] Bothfeld says dumping occurred in the past, but generally only when facilities closed over long holiday weekends. UVM Extension Agriculture Economist Bob Parsons says this time it's in higher volume, and the result of shipping costs exceeding potential revenue from a sale. "So we dump the milk," said Parsons. "It sounds wasteful, but there is a pure economics to it, when we're hauling liquid milk that is expensive to haul."

Spokespeople for the Vermont Food Bank say perishable items like milk are tough to handle and say they generally give out coupons for milk rather than storing and distributing it.

The level of waste here is hard to fathom Rather than shipping and selling the milk, some Vermont dairy distributors are instead dumping truckloads of product into fertilizer pits It might make economic sense on some level, but wasting perfectly good food when people are going hungry is mind-blowing.I'm still sure it's not impossible to somehow figure out a way to donate the milk to people who could use it.