Colorado is Thinning the Herd…Got Milk?
and raising milk prices for all consumers.
The Denver Post has an article this morning describing the national “herd retirement” program and how it is affecting a Colorado dairy farm.
June’s roundup at the Bernhardts’ 1,900-acre farm was part of a 225,783-cow retirement that removed 4.5 billion pounds of milk from the market stream nationwide in three phases this year.
It was the nation’s second-largest herd retirement since the Cooperatives Working Together program began in 2003. The CWT is funded by dairy co-ops and individual dairy farmers trying to manage production to make dairy farming viable, CWT spokesman Christopher Galen said.
The idea is to cut milk production in the hopes of driving up chronically low milk prices paid to dairy farmers, Galen said.
This certainly isn’t the first time a cooperative has decided to sacrifice livestock in order to artificially boost prices. Hoover and Roosevelt both supported programs of this nature to “protect” the farmer from falling prices and we all know how that well that worked. While the farmer in the short term may appear to benefit, the gain is short lasting. By restricting the natural supply of commodities, the consumer prices are raised and supply is curtailed even further. The consumer will be forced to buy less of this product in the future, causing the demand for milk to also fall. Lower demand for the artificially priced commodity will drop and the farmer will find even less profit in the future. Policies like these hurt both the consumer and the farmer in the economic long term.
Yes Colorado, it is the evils of low milk prices that are destroying our economy. Thankfully, the cooperatives are “working together” to help us consumers. Who said we still have a free market economy?
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