Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese….
…Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.
The organization’s activities, revealed through interviews and records, provide a stark example of inherent conflicts in the Agriculture Department’s historical roles as both marketer of agriculture products and America’s nutrition police.
Read the whole article, it’s in turn depressing and hilarious. The fact that government in this day in age still considers it important to “bolster farmers” is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about when I worry about industrial policy’s inability to cease once it’s outlived it’s usefulness. Bad subsidies really seem to have a hard time going away.
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
Sunday ~ November 7th, 2010 at 12:10 am
Edwin Perello
We need to round up some pitchforks and go farmer hunting.
Sunday ~ November 7th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
sardonic_sob
This is exactly the kind of thing I mean when I say that while it’s certainly possible to scientifically manage an economy in theory, in practice it ain’t never gonna happen. We give farmers subsidies to keep commodity prices high: we even give some farmers money NOT to grow food. At the same time, we give people money to buy food because it’s too expensive, and we give free food to people who could pay for it themselves (though to the detriment of the rest of their standard of living.) Now, is there some optimal point where we can determine that some combination of these might in fact be a rational thing to do? Probably. Do we have any idea where it is or if we’re anywhere close to it? I am highly dubious.
(Incidentally I know that certain kinds of welfare payments are not-very-well-disguised commodities subsidies. The point remains.)