News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:President Jimmy Carter has passed away by bdangubic on Sunday December 29, 2024 @06:25PM (#42544538)
Giant agribusiness makes money, but the prosperous dairy operators really need regulation at the federal level to thrive.

good thing we elected a party that loves nothing more than federal regulation… /s

I am neither democrat nor republican so I have no skin in the game here but I think this thinking here is very naive.

Re:President Jimmy Carter has passed away by Spooky23 on Sunday December 29, 2024 @07:09PM (#42544881)
The grain market is a function of government regulation and price controls. The difference there is we scaled it up.

Ever wonder why thousands of Mexicans woke up one day and decided to walk across the desert, never to return? Well, we flooded the market with massive quantities of subsidized corn and put their farms out of business. We did the same thing domestically with other commodities in places like New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

With dairy, you had in-state production requirements and quotas that maintained a balance in price. A smallish dairy farm could support a household reasonably prosperously — there were thousands of farms in places like New York. Now you need thousands of cows to survive - that why milk is often cheaper than water in the supermarket.

But just like WalMart, it gutted a key price of the rural economy. Hell, I watched it happen on a farm I worked on, that operated since the 1600s under the Dutch. Since the early 2000s they board horses for rich people to pay their property taxes.