Associated Press
We talked a week ago about the farm bill that was stuck in Congress, and the spike in dairy prices Americans would see if the legislation failed to pass. The Senate approved its version over the summer, but House Republicans refused to take up the bill, and for a variety of complicated reasons, the result was likely to be an unstable market and milk prices at $8 a gallon.
The good news is, that's not going to happen, thanks to a nine-month farm bill extension that was included in the larger fiscal agreement approved by the House last night. The bad news is, the temporary fix is still a bit of a mess.
In the final hours, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) found herself pushed aside in favor of legislative language generated by the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a bit player and frequent "no" vote when the Senate adopted a more comprehensive five-year farm bill last June.
McConnell's role in the tax talks gave him immense leverage, while Stabenow was hurt by committee infighting over her efforts to write a more comprehensive farm bill extension that included changes in the dairy program.
The upshot is a victory for Southern agricultural interests with the greatest stake in a costly system of direct cash payments to often already profitable producers. In the dairy arena, giant processors like Dean Foods Co. come out ahead while the outcome is a major blow for the National Milk Producers Federation, which watched with disbelief from the sidelines on New Year's Eve.
Farmers see the existing dairy support program as an out-of-date system in need of reform and a long-term fix, and many policymakers focused on agricultural policy hoped to see Congress approve a five-year plan.
None of that is happening, farming interests on Capitol Hill appear increasingly divided in their lobbying strategy, and the dairy industry is incensed.
Agriculture may not be the sexiest political issue on the landscape, but we can expect this to be a major point of contention in the new Congress.
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It is too bad the taxpayers subsidize something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr-EyIaXAD4
Is nothing sacred anymore?? What we eat? Milk? A cow's udder? There simply ain't anything the contortionist tentacles of government won't reach into!!
Always nice to see a drooling idiot lacking frontal lobes show us what happens with ten generations of hillbilly incest. And now you're in the killfile where you belong.
Agricultural policy in this country has been topsy-turvy for some time, rewarding Big Ag with big subsidies, and leaving small farmers out in the cold.
In the meantime, corporate farming has been sucking up our potable water and poisoning the land with toxic runoff.
We can, and should, set the model for responsible farming in the near future.
The entire system of agricultural subsidy in this country needs to be overhauled.
Whenever you say "Farm" in this country it conjures the modernly ridiculous vision of Small Farmers and ranchers bringing their crops in to be driven to market on flatbed trucks. It's just not true and it hasn't been true since before the Dust bowl...
Modern Farms are Factories that have infinitely less in common with "Tom Joad" and more with "Steve Jobs" (and that is being far more generous than they deserve)
The vision of small farmers and ranchers bringing their crops to sell is a sign of poverty. The farming business is the most capital intensive business there is and produces one of the smallest returns on investment. Have you priced farm equipment lately? Make payments on that, deal with the weather, highly volatile commodity prices and see how you would fair. We have the safest, most abundant supply of food in the world. If we don't keep our farmers in the business of growing food we could be in trouble. We have seen long lines for fuel. Would we want to see long lines for food?
That's exactly why it is only profitable for large corporations that can muster the resources and why there are no (or very very few) small Farms anymore. I am just saying that no one should be blind to who we are actually dealing with here. This is industry in all it's terrible glory and needs to be seen, understood and handled that way.
But, but, Sir! What about the "Free Markets"?
(Besides, milk is for infant mammals- calves, lambs, Honey Boo Boo.)
Obviously, some people here don't understand the farm bills. They already do not pay farmers that earn above a certain threshold, no matter where the money comes from. The majority of the money in the farm bill is food stamps and school lunch programs and other entitlement programs. It is the farmers that get the smallest share of the pie. A huge, huge amount is entitlements. So those of you who want to gripe about the farm bill, you need to encourage you congressmen to do away with entitlements so that they can strike the farm bill. Our government is riddled with entitlements disguised as something else.
Precisely what we should be looking for in McConnell's movements and whereabouts, McConnell's staff and the Minority Leader's lobbyist are always standing by with cloak room full of readymade industry stamped and approved legislation favoring the collective aggrandizement of power.
If it is favorable to a bigger buck's producer, then the campaign dollars come rolling in untraceable, it could be called milking the cows. By then way milk cows often love being milked.
If Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) works for real, fair, considerate and long term farm bill, the Minority Leader's lobbyist will have a copy and begin making it better for the Minority Leader's campaign donors.
That brings in the perspective that most all the bills being held up in the Senate have plenty of gestation time for lobbying examination. This reminds us that Senatorial cannibals have more impact than vegetarians, knowing how vegetarian's cows eat, and can be milked fits into the cannibals plans to eat all their own children.
The upshot is a victory for Southern agricultural interests with the greatest stake in a costly system of direct cash payments to often already profitable producers.
Surprise surprise, the Confederate Senator from Kentucky sticks it to the Yankees again. As Michael Tomasky pointed out in his excellent article in the Daily Beast on Monday, the South is The Problem. 200 years of bad dealing, lies, and treason.
More blue state to red state welfare.
Starve the Children, feed the Entitlements. It is well known that adding food programs gathers congressional votes in non-farm areas, and adding farm subsidies gathers congressional votes in farm states, but what has that got to do with the farming, not much
Food programs and Congressional votes is the control mechanism that makes the system work, not for the want of food and not for the need to smooth farm production.
You have to ignore and forget a lot of history to imagine a 'free market' working where so many live in non-farm areas (with no free farm market in cities) while so much food is produced on areas of fewer customers (with no demand, free food market on the farms.)
The forgotten part is that given enough energy the farmer can have all the land in maximum production with tillage, fertilizers, pest and disease control, and on good years have very good years, and in bad years have very bad years, all with the land ruined by exploitation. More, more and more again does not suite the land, or smooth production, or make for sensible land use and preservation, and it subjects prices fluctuations between ruinous lows and objectionable highs. The result is waste, waste in overabundance and waste in shortages.
The high level energy feed economy dictates farms in one area and cities in another all connected by an energy intensive transportation system.
The idea of change a word 'entitlement' into meanings that word was not intended to have is politics, which is to say there is not goodly intentions.
The word used to mean that you were entitled to the crops produced on your land, or the interest on your bank account, or the proceeds from an IRA, a 401 plan, Capital gains, retained interest or from your social security contributions, payments medical care from your contributions there.
Somehow arranging food to children, lunch programs, as well as food for the uncounted millions not able to earn enough is given the derisive version of the word entitlement that is now transcribed as 'not the least bit entitled to anything'.
While the original meaning could have just been something to be taxed or not taxed, it has now been changes to 'its mine and not your under any circumstances' and oddly by that definition is something other than 'entitlement', whereas the new meaning is now 'not entitled'.
For example there is the protest made against capital gains being taxed, but not a peep against bank interest being taxed, which purports that this or that capital produced any product and should not be taxed, while the lowly wages are to be taxed. The odd idea that income once earned and invested should not be taxed ever again is pure myth not at all an entitlement at all? One wonders how titles of nobility and divine rights if kings were not entitlements.
The public should be warned that any statement using the word entitlement is fraught with deliberately confusing and contrary definitions; as if we could tax profitable confusion and produce tangible revenues to the benefited of all entanglements.
If you hear the word entitlement confusion is to deliberately follow and may cause fiscal insanity.
"Farmers see the existing dairy support program as an out-of-date system in need of reform..."
They aren't the only ones! Once again - if my tax money is being used to support "small family farmers" I might not have heartburn, but the fact is taxpayer money is being gifted like welfare to major corporate agri-business (so much for those "free-markets" the GOTP tout) - and that's where I have a problem!
Let's get real as most of the food Americans consume is not grown in the USA and comes from agri-business - why are taxpayers being forced to provide them with welfare? Doesn't keeping corporations on the public teet belie that whole "let the market decide" free-market theory that the GOTP keep blathering on about? Why is it that it's okay with the GOTP to punish single mothers, the elderly and those making well under $100k a year, yet Heaven forbid we stop gifting welfare to the rich and corporate! Enough already!
As Jack LaLanne always said: Milk is for suckling calves. If we stopped subsidizing its prices, perhaps it would be incentive to find a healthier way to get calcium, and reduce childhood obesity in the process.