It’s situations like these that entirely blunt my non-existent ambition to be a politician. From Senator Al Franken’s (MN-D) website:
Following efforts from Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, along with Representatives Collin Peterson, Tim Walz and Rick Nolan, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced new plans to help dairy producers and families in need in 2017. Low milk prices have resulted in sharply reduced incomes for U.S. dairy farmers, which is placing our nation’s dairy industry in a vulnerable position. In July, Klobuchar, Franken, Peterson, Walz, and Nolan urged the department to use its authority to take action to protect the nation’s dairy farmers from further crisis and aid the expansion and maintenance of domestic farmers. To build on support given by the USDA in August, today the USDA announced plans to purchase $20 million of cheese for food banks and pantries across the nation to assist families in need through USDA nutrition assistance programs.
I look at this and see the “creative destruction” beloved of libertarians; the free market sending its waves of destruction across a nation. As prices go up, more farmers enter the market; as prices go down, farmers crash and burn. And then the government gets involved, so that a situation that might be described as great for consumers (the obese lot of them) is characterized as a catastrophe for the other side of the pipeline. As much as I do have suspicions when the government gets involved, my sense is that the food supply comes before doctrinaire economic theory; it’s either guaranteed, or there’s rioting in the street. So the dance continues, but it’s never clear to me the next step in this polka.
Back in 2009, NBC News reported on low milk prices in Belgium:
Belgian farmers sprayed 790,000 gallons of fresh milk onto their fields Wednesday, furious over the low milk prices they say are bankrupting farmers.
Milk farmers’ groups said world prices had sunk so much they are having to sell milk at half their production costs, leaving more and more farmers unable to pay their bills.
To highlight their desperation, about 300 tractors dragged milk containers through plowed fields in southern Belgium, dumping a day’s worth of milk production in that region.
“It is a scandal to dump this, but we have to realize what the situation is,” said Belgian farm leader Erwin Schoepges. “We need a farm revolt.”
The crisis has driven many EU farmers into a “milk strike,” with thousands refusing to deliver milk to the industrial dairy conglomerates that produce anything from skimmed milk to processed cheese.
Romuald Schaber, the president of the European Milk Board farmers’ group, said up to half the milk farmers in some areas were refusing to deliver their milk and predicted the first shortages could hit some supermarkets as early as next week.
This would be politically disastrous here in the States.
