New Hampshire's dairy industry, once 2,600 farms strong, is drying up. The state now has just 130 dairy farms, and they are losing money on every gallon of milk they produce.

Farmers have cut their expenses to the quick, but they're still using up equity accrued in some cases for generations to stay in business. Unless change comes quickly to the dysfunctional milk pricing system, some farms will go under soon and most, eventually. No one can stay in business long when it costs $16 to make something that sells for $11.

The problem is national, and it can only be solved at the federal level. Preserving the nation's dairy farms is critical. And by "farms" we mean operations with 100 or 1,000 cows, not the enormous factory dairy farms of the West, though they are in trouble too.

With two wars going on, the economy in the gutter and the urgent need to reform the nation's dysfunctional health-care system, saving dairy farms seems like a lot to ask of President Obama and the congressional delegations of states like New Hampshire. After all, milk can produced cheaply in nations like New Zealand, turned into powder and shipped to places that no longer have dairy farms of their own. But the farms themselves can't be dehydrated and stored for use later. Once they're gone, they're gone - along with the way New Hampshire looks and its rural way of life.

The problems besetting the dairy industry are not new. It's been a boom-or-bust business for decades, one that changes with consumer demand, grain prices, the weather, commodity speculation, over- or under-production and, perhaps most of all, with action or inaction by the governing agencies that set milk marketing orders to stabilize prices. If prices fall below a given level, a 2002 law also requires the feds to make cash payments to farmers. The milk price control system, in place in some form since the Depression, has worked well in some years and very poorly in others. This year is one of the others.

The government limits the base price of milk but has set no production quotas. So when major corporations get into the dairy business in states where production costs are cheaper, New England dairy farms struggle and some die. That happened in 1986, when the government sponsored a buyout of whole herds to eliminate surplus production. It happened in 2003 and again this year.

Unless the pricing system is reformed and quotas or some other means are used to better match supply to demand, New England will lose its dairy farms. But if the climate changes as predicted, the water shortages that affect most of the West and Southwest will grow worse. If that happens, New England lands that have been ideal for dairy farms will be needed for that purpose again. The question is, by then, will those farms have grown trees or, worse, houses?

On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met with farmers at Carter Hill Orchard in Concord to discuss what steps the government is taking to aid dairy farmers. They include new loan programs and accelerated support payments but no imminent increase in milk prices.

Unless milk prices are raised, production quotas imposed or other reforms made, loan programs and "drink more milk" campaigns won't be enough to keep cows in New Hampshire's remaining pastures.