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TEETZ, Germany — As hunger deepens in much of the developing world, here at Jens Gerloff's small family dairy farm, milk splatters onto the tile floor and gurgles through a drain into his sewage system. It is not just a little runoff, but his entire 580-gallon daily production. While global food prices have soared, milk prices here have fallen by almost a third this year, the Federation of German Dairy Farmers said, in part because the European Union decided to raise its production quotas. Prices fell even as milk production costs for staples like fuel and feed rose by a quarter. So in a desperate effort to force a price increase, the dairy farmers began a delivery boycott on Tuesday. But the cows keep producing milk, and if the farmers do not milk them they will get sick. So Mr. Gerloff, like other farmers across Germany, rose Wednesday morning at 4:30 and started his usual 16-hour day, feeding and milking his black-and-white Holstein-Friesians at his farm here, about an hour northwest of Berlin. "A strike looks a little different for us than it does for others," he said. The difference was that he knew he would lose more than $1,000 for the day's work. Mr. Gerloff said it was hard, particularly in light of the hungry people around the world, to waste the sustenance. The federation estimated that around 10.6 million gallons of milk — up to 60 percent of the country's production — was dumped, fed to other animals or used for fertilizer on Wednesday alone. The strike had not yet affected grocery store shelves. Milk producers in neighboring countries, including Belgium and Austria, urged dairy farmers to join the strike or at least not to export to Germany.