February 4, 2000

When we were little, we sang the musical question, "Do you or I or anyone know how oats, peas, beans, and barley grow?" When we became grown-ups, we learned the answer: Our taxes provide subsidies handed out by Department of Agriculture bureaucrats, as directed by Congresspersons who want farmers' votes. I think you can see how difficult that would be to set to music, even if it made you feel like singing.

Perhaps you thought the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996 was phasing out agricultural price supports? Well, yes, if you mean the actual words "price supports." But not if you extend your newspeak phrase book to include "emergency disaster aid" packages, "payments to compensate for low prices," or new USDA programs such as "aid for livestock and dairy farmers." Those are alive and well.

It's arguable that by 1998 the Freedom to Farm Act was alive and well, too, as an incentive for more agricultural development of superior hybrids and better technology for increased yields. The same advances have been increasing milk production, too. A TV report on Tuesday night described how dairy farming techniques have raised bulls' fertility and cows' milk output. Ironically, Tuesday's papers brought additional dairy news: Yet another annual price support in euphemist's clothing called the Dairy Market Loss Assistance Program will provide $125 million to farmers who aren't getting a "fair" price.

Like so many other government interventions, milk price controls began as a temporary federal program during the Great Depression. Man, I hope they never set up anything permanent.

Unfortunately, the Agriculture Department's "aid" is costing consumers of dairy products over a billion dollars per year, $40 million of which is added to the cost of school lunch programs that we pay for, too. In other words, if milk prices go up, consumers pay more for the product and if they go down, consumers pay more for the USDA's meddling bureaucracy. And then there's California's unique, expensive, and unnecessary requirement for extra milk solids. What a convoluted mess. (Someone please take me to the Home for the Bewildered.)

Dairy farmers are taxpayers, too. They must realize that more than a third of any federal program's benefits are eaten up by administrative overhead, and when combined with supporting all other programs--besides their own--along with the cost increases they spur, only the government really wins.

© 2000 Cynthia Hahn