The Leader has a story on falling milk prices. In addition to Massa's prescription of limiting uncertified foreign imports, a New York Dairy Association spokesman says that we need to lower the price of doing business in New York, which is the highest in the nation.
Comments
Maybe we can figure out a way to run cars on milk instead of gas. Nevermind - more cows would just speed up global warming.
I'm not going to worry too much about dairy farmers. They'll get some "disaster payments" and "deficency payments" and all other forms of federal assistance to make sure they keep over-producing, just like every other farmer around.
Maybe you should spend a week working on a farm before jumping ugly on the federal assistance farmers get.
My dad grew up on a farm and still owns part of his family farm. I'm married to a farmer's daughter. I've spent a hell of a lot more than a week on a farm.
Farmers, and dairy farmers in particular, work really hard. They're also heavily subsidized by government farm programs. These subsidies fund overproduction of commodities and keep prices artificially low. Whether that's good policy or not is debatable. On one hand, it's important to have a good supply of food. On the other, the way we subsidize commodities governs what's cheap to eat, and our dairy, meat and corn rich diets are pretty unhealthy.
Rotten - doesn't the government set the price that farmers are paid for milk?
Elmer- yes it does. When the price falls below a certain level, the farmer gets a subsidy between the federal price and the market price. That's occuring right now with the drop in the market price of milk.
Rotten-
I appreciate your ties to agriculture. I just get tired of the bum rap farmers get for trying to make a decent living working endlessly so that the rest of us can eat for far less than the rest of the world. I'm for small farmers getting assistance as opposed to the Archer Daniels of the world.
Countryboy, I have nothing against hard-working family farmers "farming the program" as my father-in-law says. You have to make a living somehow, and the government rigs the market. What kills me is the gov't setting food policy in collusion with companies like ADM, which promote over production of corn and soy products that make junk food cheap to produce. Fruit and veg farmers don't get those subsidies. If the gov't is going to promote certain crops, why not the more healthy ones?
Elmer - Here's some more info on dairy pricing. It has two components:
1. Market regulation via Price supports and Market Orders. The gov't will buy excess milk and milk products from farmers. That keeps prices high (since supply is artificially limited). Also, Market Orders mandate a minimum price paid per state for milk products (again keeping the price high).
2. Income support. Cash payments to farmers when prices fall below a certain level. That supports overproduction (since it limits the risk for farmers) and tends to lower prices.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Dairy/Policy.htm
Also, there's no reason to drink as much milk and eat as much cheese as we do in the US other than the gov't lowering the price of dairy versus other food options. Again, nothing wrong with them in moderation, but the price structure makes them artificially cheap.
These policies are supported by both political parties?
Yep. The farm bill usually passes with bipartisan support and those policies have been around though Republican and Democratic administrations.
This is one of the reasons that when I hear "bipartisan compromise" I think, "hmm, I guess everyone got all the pork they wanted."
Despite the way the media acts, bipartisanship is not always a good thing, that's for sure.