Psychic exhaustion week. Month, really. I got nuthin.
But this is important. It’s big on the problems, and it announces some help, including a modest increase in dairy pricing. Enough? Okay, that’s barely a rhetorical question… of course its not…. but what should be done? Discuss…
Pat Leahy hit the nail – antitrust investigations. The structure of the dairy processing industry meets the definition of a monopoly, with a handful of companies controlling virtually all of the market. The price of milk at the store doesn’t drop with the price of milk paid at the farm and the middleman rakes off the profit. There’s a lot of money in the middle that could be going to the farmers.
There’s also the practice of rotational grazing. It takes more land than some farmers have, but it gets the farmer off the treadmill of grain buying, which is the biggest single expense per hundredweight. There are a few Vermont farmers doing it. Their gross income drops, but their expenses drop even more. The few that practice it seem to be making a real living, even in hard times. Has anybody looked at the numbers on that recently?
There are so many farmers hurting so badly this year. This is an encouraging start.
Let’s hope there’s some way to help much more without having to wait for the glacial pace of Washington policy sausage-making.