“You must understand that the market controls the price”
You must understand the market has had little to do with the price of food for decades.
Pull out price supports and the agriculture industry, what is left of it, will collapse. Leaving the US with inadequate food resources, tends of thousands unemployed farmers, and a need to import even more food.
The subsidies need to be cut but it needs to be done in a responsible way.
If the agriculture industry (or any other industry for that matter) depends upon government interference, then we are truly in trouble. Let producers produce, and either make it or not on their own. Food would be cheaper, even if we had to import it.
I guess it is time to bring the market back. Rip that government band-aid right off.
I am not a fan of anything government. You are apparently dependent on it. We could never reach a solution to the ability of government to fall into the wrong hands.
Then let it collapse. I am not scared of the bogeymen you and others like you use to frighten us with.
It doesn't feel like rationing but $12 a pound for beef is not normal ~ on the other hand $2 a pound for pork is a little more on target, and $1 a pound for chicken does make sense.
The market did only part of that ~ much of it was done by cutting us off from Canadian beef ~ fear of Mad Cow Disease! But chickens and pigs utilize grains more efficiently than do cattle ~ at least for meat.
When it comes to milk, the law was originally written when most regions had their own local dairy industries. They'd just had the experience of the Dust Bowl and that period's association with a different great drought.
Price supports were thought to be useful for keeping the local dairies in business no matter what happened to the local grain markets, plus, the greatest users of dairy products were families with children ~ and at that time the youth were the most likely to be poor and unable to afford milk for their babies (many Freepers were babies then BTW).
Market theories tend to collapse in the face of great droughts ~ at least when we are talking about agriculture. The way this system works now is the background costs to produce a gallon of milk sky rocketed ~ milk price support levels increased accordingly. When the drought ends, the background costs will decline and milk price support levels should decline accordingly.
Lurking in the background is the lost opportunity cost of the dairies ~ they could send their cows to slaughter and get a chunk of that $12 per pound retail beef price!
That would reduce the milk volume and increase the price even more.
Total elimination of the price supports will result in the herds being slaughtered and the price of milk rising far higher than a pitiful $8 per gallon!
No.It.Won't.
A lot of small family farms will collapse, but the industry will not. Now, I have a fondness for small family farms -- don't get me wrong. I live in an upstate New York farming village that would see some serious repercussions to the ending of government subsidies.
But it ain't right and it doesn't make economic sense to subsidize small, inefficient operations with the hard-earned dollars of American workers.