Editor’s note: This op-ed is by James H. Maroney Jr., a law school student, who is a former farmer.
Dear Peter:
I heard you today on VPR talking about the farm bill. You said that Amanda St. Pierre had proposed a supply management feature to replace the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) and that because of it, passage of the bill was essential to Vermont dairy farmers.
I think you know that Vermont dairy farmers are not monolithic but comprise two separate groups, conventional and organic. I think you also know that with or without its passage, the bill is not written with Vermont dairy farmers of either stripe in mind and, in fact, U.S. farm policy is single-mindedly intent upon encouraging overproduction in states where costs are lowest. It does not matter to policy makers that the U.S. dairy industry now makes 12 billion pounds more milk than federal milk marketing orders (FMMO) markets can absorb; what matters is that the surplus keeps prices low for manufacturers and consumers, who comprise 99 percent of your constituents. It does not matter to policy makers where the low-cost producers are or how much environmental damage they do in pursuit of the bills goals. Milk is a fungible commodity and overproduction in other states will drive FMMO milk prices below the average Vermont farmer’s cost of production. Passage of the farm bill is not only not essential, it is a virtual guarantee that our farms, large or small, will continue their slide into oblivion.
Your listeners heard but a passing comment about Vermont’s 200 Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) certified organic farmers who make a product that is in consistently rising demand, which exercises internal control over supply, which returns a price above the farmers’ cost of production, which does not pollute the lake and which does not require massive government support.
With respect, Amanda St. Pierre and Bill Rowell, both fine people trying to make the best of a terrible situation, typify what has been for two generations wrong with Vermont’s dwindling dairy industry. They both produce not to the market but to the surplus, which drives prices down for farmers and support costs up for taxpayers; they both farm on Vermont concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO), which with state support are out of compliance with the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting process of the Clean Water Act and with Vermont’s water quality statutes (6 V.S.A. § 4810 and 10 V.S.A. § 1259); and they both farm conventionally, which is the proximate cause of overproduction, low prices, farm attrition, rural economic decay and of nitrate and phosphorus pollution in Lake Champlain; and they both rely on a steady stream of state subsidies in the form of property and sales tax abatements or exemptions, outright cash disbursements and cost sharing for manure digesters and other production-boosting technologies. These programs cost Vermont taxpayers between $60 million and $100 million per year in addition to the $140 million state and federal governments have spent in the last decade to clean up after them.
You did not mention that Vermont cannot meet its federally mandated total maximum daily load (TMDL) without regulating the kind of dairy farming that, with explicit support from Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets and Vermont’s congressional delegation, Bill Rowell and Amanda St. Pierre practice. Your listeners heard but a passing comment about Vermont’s 200 Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) certified organic farmers who make a product that is in consistently rising demand, which exercises internal control over supply, which returns a price above the farmers’ cost of production, which does not pollute the lake and which does not require massive government support.
I wish, when you address your constituents, you would consider telling them that the farm bill is designed to favor farmers in Midwestern states and to pressure marginal producers, like those in Vermont, to follow the 94 percent of our dairy farms that have gone out of business since the conventional paradigm was adopted. The empirical evidence is clear: support for the status quo will ruin what little is left of Vermont’s dairy industry. What is essential is not the farm bill; it is that our governor, our secretary of agriculture, our secretary of natural resources and our legislators summon the courage, very soon, to reform conventional dairy.
