Overlooked in the fiscal cliff debate is the looming “dairy cliff.Congress has until Jan. 1 to renew the Farm Bill. If it doesn’t, the price of milk and dairy products could rise sharply.

A gallon of milk now costs an average of $3.65. But that price could soar to $6 or even $8 a gallon without a new farm bill. The reason? One part of the Farm Bill controls the dairy market. Without it, pricing would go back to an outdated law put in place during the Truman era. The government would be required to buy dairy products based on 1949 production costs, when milking was done by hand. That would double today’s price. Farmers would lose incentive to sell directly to producers and prices in the grocery store would skyrocket.

Mike Kohler with the Dairy Producers of Utah joins Rod at 4:50pm to discuss the threat of rising milk prices.

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http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/12/28/look-out-here-comes-the-dairy-cliff-and-the-retail-cliff/