In case you hadn’t heard, 2018 is a bad time to be a dairy farmer in Pennsylvania. Farmers are closing down or moving on to different pursuits; buyers are canceling contracts. It’s not a stretch to say that the industry is in crisis.

The need for aid couldn’t be more apparent. When the milk industry was in its heyday, Butler County was home to 430 dairy farms, according to industry experts. In 1969 the county had 396 dairy operations, according to the Butler County Dairy Promotion Team.

Today, the county is home to about 25.

The economic impact of this loss is likely substantial. According to the USDA’s Census of Agriculture, Butler County sold nearly $53 million in agricultural products in 2012. Milk from cows made up just a fraction of that — a little more than $7.5 million, putting the county 43rd in the state for milk sales.

Reasons for the bleed-off of dairy farms are, by now, well-worn common knowledge: demand for the product is down; supply is up; prices are down; and family operations are facing increasing financial pressures — forcing them to take out loans to finance their operations, switch to other, more lucrative types of farming, or sell of their businesses altogether.

In a plan announced earlier this week, Gov. Tom Wolf proposes to buttress the industry by working to attract milk processors to Pennsylvania, ramping up marketing efforts to get people interested in drinking more milk; and providing funding and other resources to help farmers improve product transportation, regulations that adversely impact farmers, and more.

Will this work? Is it too little too late? It is, paradoxically, probably too early to say.

But it’s also worth noting that state officials are actually listening and responding to the industry’s concerns. And industry groups have, in turn, have shown a willingness to work on a small, hyper-focused scale in order to help save Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers.

Earlier this year more than 40 Pennsylvania dairy farmers were saved when groups ramped up promotion efforts and advertising in response to an announcement by Dean Foods that it would stop buying the farms’ milk.

These kinds of efforts — sweeping government initiatives; collaborative, industry-wide pushes to promote their product; and farmers’ own work to expand and diversify how and to whom they sell their products — will continue to be necessary if counties like Butler want to retain a homegrown dairy presence.

That last point — preserving the local, homegrown aspect of the industry — must remain a vital portion of these plans moving forward.