If milk prices DO happen go up in the absence of a new Federal farm bill, the higher prices will be temporary, as those same price increases become the market signal to other farmers that they can produce and deliver milk for less.
The truth is that the majority, the vast majority of what the nation’s farms produce have NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL in “assistance” from the Federal government’s farm programs.
The other truth is that the vast majority of all direct assistance and subsidies from the farm bill go to a minorty of farms at the top of the farm revenue heap.
The farm bill has not been an economic necessity for the nation’s farm economy for decades. It is 100% about industry cartels, crony capitalism, political donations from the subsidized segment of American farmers and wholesale transfers from all taxpayers to a minority of the nation’s farms - a pampered minority.
What began as a depression era aid to America’s farms is a program whose purpose has been over taken by time, and it is time the entire program died. Keeping it alive will have NOTHING to do with keeping a vibrant American farm economy - it’s no more than keeping a corpse on life support.
I wish you were right, but this statement is not true as far as dairy farms go. Because of the support price of milk, dry milk stocking, food and cheese programs run by the Federal government, and because of food stamps, there has essentially been "Quantitative Easing" in the dairy economy for 70+ years.
It is 100% about industry cartels, crony capitalism, political donations from the subsidized segment of American farmers
All true, but it is also about the perception on the part of "small" farmers that they cannot survive without subsidies. The Gingrich Congress tried to take farmers off subsidies in 1994, and the uproar in the Midwest and dairy country in the Northeast was deafening at the first sign of trouble.
ALL American farming is subsidized. It doesn't need to be, it shouldn't be, but simply saying it isn't subsidized doesn't make it so.