Milk Prices Likely To Soar In January After GOP Obstruction Blocked The Farm Bill In The House

abolish all farm subsidies.

Then perhaps you'll feel less of a need to corral cows, feed them hormones, kill their children, and eat them when you're done with them.

Try Rice Dream instead. Its dreamy. It also won't cause late-life osteoporosis because of phosphorus-based hormones.

So...how's Texas this time of year?

When you say 'good' you are saying good to a massive slaughter. Why you would wish for such a thing is beyond me. Do you seriously think those cows would be set free or something? No,when they can not sell the milk, it is cow death time. That's what you are cheering for.

Although it is also hereditary.

Wouldn't want to -

Look it up, read about it in the sci lit and decide for yourself.

there was a glut of milk because no one was drinking it.

A lot of programs that are in the farm bill have to do with assisting small beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers. Community and economic development grants for poor rural areas are in this bill. Funds to help farm to school programs are in this bill. Funds to help increase fresh food access to low income populations are in this bill. Funds to help create and maintain farmers markets across the country are in this bill. Funds to help implement healthy eating and disease prevention programs. As is a lot, lot more.

The farm bill is more than agricultural subsidies to large farmers. And as is usually the case, it will be the little guys who are hurt the most by failure to pass a bill

There are many products and businesses not obviously tied to milk production since they depend on milk by-products or derivatives. It is like saying the cost of gas only impacts those who drive to work.

As mentioned in previous comments there are many programs included in the bill, and more in other places that will be impacted by its failure to pass.

As a simple matter of narrow thinking the attack minded GOP leadership who engineer this kind of massive failure intend it to force the president and anyone else who does not agree with them in any degree to kow-tow. They assume that anyone who is damaged by this pernicious tactic have only themselves to blame since "those" people are expecting government to act in the mutual interest of ALL the citizens rather than favoring GOD's chosen few...Land of milk and honey indeed!

because I don't get what the article says. It seems to say that there is a minimum price of milk that if milk goes below that the government buys milk to keep of the market to raise the price. I get that. It then seems to say that the price of milk is currently above that price so the government isn't buying milk. I get that. It then says that if the farm bill isn't extended, then the government has to buy milk at $40 per hundred weight which is twice the current price due to a 1949 law. So in 1949, milk cost $40 per hundred weight in 1949 dollars? Was milk like some luxury back then?

In fact, food has gone down so much in price that we don't even use it to calculate inflation anymore (hence the quotes around "real"). When was the last time you spent over half your money on food? That was the original food component of the CPI: 52%.

that is what I don't get. I know milk was more expensive in terms of incomes but I really would be amazed if milk was $8.00 a gallon in 49.

In the years since, we've worked out more or less how it operates (Milton Friedman, of all people, figured it out, despite being wrong about nearly everything else), so we can run the equations backwards and get rough equivalents of what a price in the past was.

Milk being $8.00 a gallon in 2012 means it costs roughly what a minimum wage worker makes in an hour (or a little more). The minimum wage in 1949 was 75 cents. So an equivalent cost would be a bit more than 75 cents per gallon of milk, which lo and behold is more or less what it cost back then (80 cents).

but I figure there would be a set amount in the law. So the minimum price should drop way low not surge way high unless there was also an inflation formula with it.

Cows used to have to be milked by hand back in the 1940's, today they use machines to do it. Same with a lot of the other steps involved, so the cost of making milk are much lower today then back then, hence lower prices if you adjust the price back then to be in today's inflation adjusted dollars.

veterinary care have helped rein in dairy production costs (independent of the effects of the subsidies).

N.B. I used to milk cows by hand back in the mid-70s. I could milk a Guernsey or Jersey in about 20 minutes and get 5-6 gallons per milking. 5-6% butterfat, IIRC. Milk machines, if not monitored carefully, can easily injure a cow's udder and teats. FWIW, dairy cows are very decent creatures, easily preferable to the vast majority of homo sapiens.

...without some other plan in place, and a transition period.

available for the public to be blackmailed. Who do these farmers think they are, the oil companies?

there are many other options available, goat, soy, ect...

president? Of course they will but we know it will be the weeper of the house and his obstructionist merry men -- maybe the ghost of christmas yet to come made a visit to them??

instead, I will make almond milk here and use that. Far cheaper when I make it myself, too.

There may be many adults who want milk, but I don't think it is an essential for any adult. I hope they resolve this farm subsidy issue, but it is a hot potato for sure; not passing it is going to rock some people's worlds.

I think I bought a total of 1 gallon of milk last year, once to make mac & cheese and once to make White Russians.

I bet it's a nice high percentage.

same story, different day