The article illustrates the crisis, producing an example of how farmers fail to make ends meet:

>A gallon of milk costs a farmer approximately $1.90 to produce, but in the last year, farmers have been receiving as little as $1.35 per gallon.

But they don't explain the underlying economic forces. The only possible reason (I think) that a farmer can't charge more than $1.35 for a gallon of milk is that some other farmer is able to produce a gallon of milk for less than $1.35.

So, clearly, some farmers are quite successful, and their success (or maybe just their efficiency) is part of the reason that other farmers are having a hard time? But the article doesn't talk about that much.

Slightly off topic: I pay my local supermarket $3 for a gallon of milk and now I'm curious about the breakdown of what that markup is spent on.