New York isn’t special
Well, it looks like it’s my turn to rip on the New York Times editorial page. Two days ago the editorial staff put together this piece they call “The Dairy Quandary,” about extra subsidies for dairy farmers. It doesn’t seem like much of a quandary to me; I think they’re really reaching in order to justify conclusions they know can’t be right. They write:
We do not like agricultural subsidies or price supports, and we have opposed dairy subsidy programs. They tend to push farmers in the wrong directions, and they blunt the impact of market forces on farms. But there is a special argument to be made in this case.
What’s the special argument? They heart New York.
Nearly 2.5 million acres in New York state are directly tied to dairy farming. The milk crisis is severe enough to put many farms at risk, raising the potential of abandoned farmland susceptible to development. … This kind of dairy is a relatively benign use of the land, a means of protecting open space, a form of stewardship that is more acceptable than most others. We think it is right to keep the state’s dairy farmers on their farms, even if we are not happy with this way of going about it.
Nice try. There’s nothing different about New York dairy farmers that makes subsidies okay in their case. They’re still getting pushed in the wrong direction, encouraged to keep farming because it’s artificially profitable. Market forces are being blunted just the same. But it’s okay this time, they say, because … open space should be protected? People are using large open fields to produce commodities that are worth less than they cost, but that’s okay because they’re preserving those open fields! Silly me, I thought we had some state and federal organizations that kept an eye on that sort of thing. And, erm, does this really count as preserving open space? Sure, there aren’t any office buildings there, but there are, you know, cows. And the crop fields get sprayed with pesticides. And they’re surrounded by barbed-wire fences. It’s not like New Yorkers get to hike through the dairy farms to appreciate nature. (Also: do they really mean to imply that it’s important to preserve open space in New York, but not in Missouri or Nebraska? I know it might not feel like it from Manhattan, but New York is not that short on open space.)
It gets even stranger when they start parroting arguments from the pro-subsidy handbook:
Feed costs, the recession, a change in consumers’ milk consumption have all played a part in the dairy crisis, which affects organic farms as well as conventional ones. Like most commodity farmers, dairy farmers are essentially locked into the one product they have invested in producing, making it very hard to change quickly.
Right, “like most commodity farmers”—so why suggest that dairy farmers are a special case here? They agree that “[change] will have to come — including a revamping, if not a dismantling, of the maze of dairy price supports.” The bottom line is that that change will feel quick whenever it happens. Subsidies, even short-term ones, just push the timeline out to next quarter, or next year, or a couple years from now. (And when we get there, we’ll need more “short-term” subsidies.) The New York Times editorial board knows the correct policy on farm subsidies, and they should have the courage to advocate for it even when it hits a little closer to home.
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Normally I don’t like industrial subsidies. They almost always cause more problems than they help.
I differ a bit on ag subsidies because I think it’s a matter of national security. We’ve got to have a solid, protected and abundant food supply. Now, as much as I love my peanut butter and a tall glass of milk before bed every night, is it vital to my survival? No.
So in a round-about way…I agree with you 100%.
[...] another landscape. “Where is the booty we lifted off the idiots paddling around in circles to defend dairy subsidies?” The hand known only as “Z” stepped forward. “And the bit about figuring [...]
One side-effect of dairy price subsidies is cheap cheeseburgers, pizza, omelette’s, atherosclerosis, etc.
But really, if we can’t dismantle price supports, when? And how is it a national security issue? Will we stop making milk if there aren’t price supports?