over three hours at a rally Friday in Mount Markham Middle School gym as over 200 upstate New York dairy farmers pleaded for action on a range of issues crippling their industry.

One after another dairy farmers and others involved in the industry took a microphone to berate county, state and federal representatives from throughout the region.

Some were brought to tears describing their inability to make a living, a few simply screamed in frustration and others demanded answers. But the dire situation facing the men and women speaking was painfully clear.

“We are in a disaster,” declared Ken Dibbell, of Chenango County.…“The people who feed the nation can' t feed themselves,” Gretchen Maine, a dairy farmer from Waterville, “what' s wrong this picture.”…The time frames for both solutions seemed inbeen a farmer in Sherman all his life, learning from his father back in the 1960's.

He's seen all the ups and downs of producing wheat and corn in Texoma, and he says this was one of the worst years for corn.…"All the rain we got back in April and May, we got 20 inches of rain in a two week period there, really just damaged our corn. Our corn just never quite recovered from too much water,” said Wetzel.

Wetzel says he lost about 50% of his wheat and corn crops this harvest season, a trend that farmers are experiencing across Texoma.

"The rains have just killed me this year," said Tucker Gant, 51, a vegetable and fruit farmer in Elk, who estimates his total losses this year at nearly