With the loss of one of its major markets — the restaurant industry — some Idaho dairy farms started dumping excess milk this past weekend.

Rick Naerebout, head of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, said the coronavirus situation has shut down restaurants, dine-in establishments and food service, essentially blocking a major customer for milk products.

“We've seen upwards of an 80 percent decrease in demand from restaurants,” Naerebout said. “You can’t turn the cows off, so unfortunately what we’re seeing is them pouring the milk down the drain at the farm.”

East Idaho dairies so far have yet to resort to such drastic measures.

Many local dairies sell their milk directly to the public and to the Glanbia Nutritionals cheese processing plant in Blackfoot.

R. Kim Wolfley, president of Snake River Dairymen’s Association, a co-op of about 30 East Idaho dairies, said the virus situation came at the worst time. The combination of restaurants closing, oversupply, low cattle prices and disruption in exports is ganging up on dairies. With oversupply comes lower prices.

“That’s what’s causing a perfect storm,” Wolfley said.

To make matters worse, dairies are coming into the “spring flush” — when cows ramp up their production with warmer weather and more sunshine.

“Things are changing very rapidly,” Naerebout said. “I didn’t expect that we’d be in the position where we would see milk dumped this weekend. If you would have asked me the question Friday, I would have said we were a couple of weeks away from being in that position. ... I don’t think anybody or any (dairy) business is immune from the impacts of the virus and the loss of demand that it’s creating.”

Naerebout said the dairies dumping milk were in the “dairy belt” in Magic Valley where about 70 percent of the state’s milk is produced. Idaho ranks fourth in the nation in milk production.

Because East eastern Idaho dairies sell fresh to customers and excess to the cheese processor, they haven’t had to dump milk. But that could change if the cheese plant gets more than it needs.

“We have regular customers (for fresh milk),” said Alan Reed, president of Reed’s Dairy in Idaho Falls. “We’ve had some new customers come in and say it’s nice to have a steady source when the grocery stores are selling out.”

Nondairy folk may find it odd that milk can be scarce in the grocery store, yet be in oversupply.

“It's disappearing like crazy in the stores but the retail makes up a small part of the dairy products overall,” Wolfley said. “If we could move all of our product out of the grocery stores we’d be doing pretty well. But so much goes to the schools, the restaurants and when they shut down that really hurt.”

Small dairies, such as Dale Mortimer’s Daloris Dairy who milks 50 cows in the Rigby area, have been selling more fresh milk since the coronavirus outbreak.

“Milk sales have just skyrocketed for us because the grocery stores are usually running out of milk, and we have our own supply,” Mortimer said. “We've just been doing a great business. We'll take the coronavirus any day. For the time being as long as it lasts.”

But with oversupply for dairies as a whole comes lower prices for the industry.

Wolfley said dairymen interested in retiring or struggling with their business will feel the pinch the most and have difficulty selling their business.

“I think that there are some in our co-op (hurting), some of the older dairymen that are getting close to retiring,” he said. “This might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. ... The best thing to do is hunker down, cut back on expenses and weather the storm.”

Naerebout said events like the virus will hammer the industry into a different shape in the future.

“Our expectation is that it’s going to accelerate the consolidation of the dairy industry,” Naerebout said. “It's something we see in Idaho, and we see it across the country where your smaller and medium-sized dairies exit the business and the larger dairies continue to grow. They have the capital and the financial ability to stand these types of circumstances, and they have more resources to work with.”