By Peter Hirschfeld, Vermont Press Bureau

Sen. Bernard Sanders took aim at the nation's largest buyer of fluid milk Wednesday as he blamed consolidation in the dairy-processing industry for depressing the prices paid to Vermont dairymen.

Sanders has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate potential antitrust violations by Dean Foods, the Texas-based food-and-beverage company that buys about 70 percent of the fluid milk produced in New England.

Consolidation in the fluid-milk purchasing market, according to Sanders, is at least partially responsible for milk prices that have fallen well below the cost of production.

"If you're producing a product and by and large you have no choice but to sell that product to me, as opposed to a number of other people … where you going to go?" Sanders said. "That's why we have a concept called antitrust."

Since the beginning of 2009, farmers in Vermont have endured some of the lowest milk prices in decades. Ryegate farmer and Sanders staffer Jenny Nelson said farmers are losing about $100 per cow per month. The crisis – by all accounts the worst ever to hit the dairy industry – has already seen at least 32 Vermont farms go under this year. The 1,046 that remain, Sanders said, will suffer a similar fate without immediate federal intervention.

While Vermont farmers struggle to stay afloat, Sanders said, Dean Foods has recorded massive profits. The company made $76.2 million in the first quarter of 2009, according to Sanders, a 147-percent increase from the same time period a year earlier.

"I don't think it takes Sherlock Holmes to see a connection between the two," Sanders said.

Dean Foods spokesman Alex Wendel said the U.S. Department of Agriculture largely sets the price of milk and that supply and demand is contributing to the low price.

Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Roger Allbee said Wednesday that buyer-consolidation has long been a concern among members of the Vermont Milk Commission.

"The fact is their earnings are highest when farmers' earnings are lowest," Allbee said. "The consolidation taking place on the processing side of fluid milk … primarily means there's not much competition from many buyers."

Sanders said dismantling corporate monopolies is a longer-term effort that won't solve farmers' immediate fiscal troubles. In a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on Wednesday, Sanders sought shorter-term relief in the form of new federal subsidies, an increase in the federally set base price for milk, and unloading surplus dairy reserves into nutrition and export programs.

Increasing payments to farmers via the Milk Income Loss Contract, Sanders said, is the "shortest and easiest" solution to the current problem. The effort however faces a tough fight in Congress.

"This is tough stuff politically, because family farmers are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the overall population and we don't necessarily have the political support we would like," he said.