When Senator Robert Casey of Pennsylvania sent out press releases for his “Dairy Advancement Act” (S1682) a few weeks ago, (see “Wayne farmers still struggling” in our October 20 issue), we perused them eagerly hoping to find something that would be, well, an advancement for farmers. Our hopes began to falter as soon as we read that the legislation “would give dairy producers a choice in risk management tools by allowing them to continue to participate in the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program or to receive support for Livestock Gross Margin-Dairy (LGM-Dairy) program.”

The first red flag here is the phrase “a choice of continuing.” Choice sounds good—but if it’s a choice of continuing, by definition, it is not an advance. And both the choices presented above are old programs—which, by the way, have not prevented farmers from going out of business in droves.

Faint but pursuing, we tried to find something that is an actual change. And we found one big new thing—but far from offering a new choice, it removes an old one. Price supports will be eliminated. There’s just no telling any more how low prices of raw milk can fall.

Some advance.

The press release says this is an advance because it will “encourage production of products based on market demands.” This is code for: it will force so many more farmers out of business that supplies will eventually tighten.

Other proponents laud the repeal of price supports because it will supposedly help us compete in global markets. Sounds wonderful, for those whose knees jerk with joy every time they hear the word “globalization.”

The problem is that we personally have seen about all we want to see of the effects of globalization in what has happened to the U.S. manufacturing sector over the past couple of decades. It has precipitated a race to the bottom in the wages and working conditions of workers in all nations, as corporations seek to make their products in the countries with the lowest wages, the lousiest working conditions and the least health and environmental protections. The result for U.S. workers has been a decline in compensation, benefits and job security, terminating in a complete loss of employment. And now, just as we have blithely forced our manufacturing workforce pretty much out of existence, so this act would put similar pressure on our dairy farmers. It is no surprise that the groups that have lauded the Dairy Advancement Act appear to be either members of the dairy processing industry or the politicians financed by them.

As noted in our October 20 article, the one thing the act does not do is to push the idea of milk pricing that actually covers dairy farmers’ cost of production, as did a bill proposed by Casey and Senator Arlen Specter last year. Interestingly, though, Casey has another bill currently on the table, S1640, that retains that idea. It has not received anything like the hoopla that S1682 has, however; and since it is a reincarnation of a series of bills that have failed multiple times, nobody seems to be pinning much hope on it.

That’s probably because every time someone raises the idea of pricing milk to cover the farmers’ cost of production, someone else counters that it violates free market principles. But here’s the hypocrisy: the calculations currently used to set the abovementioned federal MILC prices already are specifically designed to cover production costs—only not for farmers. Only processors need apply. There is even a formal name for this term of the equation that is added in to make sure the processors don’t have to take a loss: “make allowance.”

To be sure, the processors grumble from time to time that it isn’t being set high enough. But can somebody explain to us why it is okay in “free markets” to try to make sure that processors’ costs are covered, but a free-market heresy to do the same for a small farmer? There’s only one difference we can think of. One is a group of corporations. The other is a group of human beings.

Casey’s S1640 isn’t perfect, either. Agricultural journalist John Bunting of Delhi, NY, for instance, argues that it makes a mistake in using a national average of production costs rather than one based on individual marketing areas (if the price of feed is very low in California but very high in the Northeast, national averages might not help our local farmers much). But at least it’s going in the right general direction. We don’t see how Casey can expedite both bills at the same time, and readers who care about our dairy farms might want to consider pushing him toward S1640, (perhaps suitably modified to use regional rather than national costs), rather than the deceptively titled Dairy Advancement Act.

[See next week’s news section for more coverage of S1640.]