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Senate committee expands eligibility for state dairy assistance program
Summary
The Senate Finance Committee recommended Senate File 3832 to the floor on March 12, expanding eligibility for the Dairy Assistance and Relief Initiative (DAIRI) to include dairy farms that did not market milk in 2022 and to base payments on DMC production history; the committee recorded the motion as passed by voice vote.
St. Paul — The Senate Finance Committee on March 12 voted to recommend Senate File 3832 to the floor, a bill from Sen. Kupec that would expand eligibility for the Dairy Assistance and Relief Initiative (DAIRI) to dairy farms that did not market milk in 2022 or that marketed milk only part of the year.
Sen. Kupec, the bill author, said the change would allow newer dairy operations that began production after 2022 — the Legislature’s base year for earlier payments — to apply for DAIRI funds and that payments would be calculated using each farm’s Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) production history. "There have been new farms that have come on since 2022," he said, and the bill would allow those farms to apply for the program.
The bill modifies statutory eligibility by adding farms without 2022 marketing to the pool of applicants and preserves the existing payment basis: DAIRI payments are tied to milk produced in 2022 up to 5 million pounds per participating farm, and the draft statutory language retains that production cap. Sen. Kupec noted the Legislature originally appropriated $4 million to DAIRI in 2023, that $1 million of that was canceled in 2025, leaving $3 million remaining for the program.
Eric Olaphson, fiscal analyst for the agriculture committee, told members the expansion is estimated to add roughly 30–40 additional dairy farms to the eligible population and would slightly reduce the average payment per eligible farm. Olaphson said the appropriation itself is unchanged and the item appears as a zero‑cost line in the committee spreadsheet because the total authorized amount is not increased.
A budget official, Mr. Nauman, explained the Finance Committee’s budget rules for tracking eligibility expansions and confirmed staff would add explanatory footnotes in Senate spreadsheets if a cancellation or offset needed to be shown. No roll-call vote was recorded in the transcript; Sen. Pappas moved the motion and the committee adopted it by voice vote.
The committee recommendation sends SF 3832 to the full Senate for further consideration; the bill was listed on the committee agenda as effective immediately upon enactment. The committee did not record individual roll‑call tallies in the hearing transcript.
