Maroney: Working Landscape Plan would perpetuate Vermont’s farm problems, not solve them
The report is utopian and long on normative economics, which expresses value judgments about economic fairness or what the economy ought to be like or what goals of public policy ought to be. Words like “should,” “must,” “ought” and “need to” proliferate. The report is short on positive economics, which expresses economic reality.
Maroney: Cabot’s misrepresentation of farming practices reprehensible
Attorney General William Sorrell is right to sanction Cabot Creamery for claiming that its farmers do not use rBST when they have no reliable process in place to certify the truth of the claim. But rBST is only the canary in the mine, not the problem.
Maroney: Farm to Plate report ignores primacy of federal agricultural policy
But saving Vermont dairy farms, the kind that 97% of Vermonters have in mind when they tell the Survey on the Future of Vermont they support agriculture, has nothing to do with milk. It envisages a return to a time when the landscape was dotted with thousands of farms making a living by producing food for local consumption. For this to occur, milk prices must rise, double or triple. For that to happen, production must be cut by 5% or 98 lbs.
Maroney: Class-Action Chapter 12 bankruptcy as a farm solution
If the banks hold collateral on assets that are $100,000 over-secured per farm ($80 million), a statewide, Chapter 12, class-action bankruptcy action could wipe out $100 million of farm liabilities at book value and convert the cash flow that would have amortized that debt to private equity.
Maroney: Dairy Price Stabilization Act will drive Vermont’s small farms out
There is no scenario anyone can articulate that makes conventional dairy farming profitable in Vermont that does not decimate 70 percent of our farms.
If dairy farmers want a higher price for their milk, they must give consumers a good reason to pay it
The conventional dairy model is predicated upon surplus production, low prices, farm attrition and lake pollution.
