But Boston’s moment of dairy celebrity may be nearing its end. Lawmakers are crafting a new farm policy, and the Boston price, in all likelihood, will no longer set the official standard for handing out checks to dairy farmers, although the subsidies will likely continue in the form of an insurance program.
Taxpayers have doled out $3.3 billion since the current program, one of two benefiting the industry, began in 2002. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed replacement program would cost an additional $50 million over the next decade.
Critics say such programs waste money and that attempts to control the milk market have been futile.
“Instead of trying to limit production and set prices, then mailing monthly checks when those prices aren’t met, Washington should step back and let dairymen take more responsibility for managing their businesses,” said Joshua Sewell, senior policy analyst for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. “Supply and demand is better left to the market than the election cycle.”
Larry Purdom, a farmer in Southwest Missouri who owns 140 head of cattle, said he has received monthly checks as large as $3,000, but has gotten just $30 or $40 in some months, and no money at all in others. Purdom, president of the Missouri Dairy Association, said the current program has been a crucial safety net for struggling dairy farmers, but argues it no longer provides enough money to keep up with feed, fuel, and fertilizer costs. He said he hopes the new insurance program will be an improvement.
But the news that Boston could lose its place in dairy lore is lamented by some, especially those who cherish Massachusetts’ previous claim on American curd history.
That came late in 1801 when the farmers of Cheshire, about 130 miles west of Boston, sent a message to Washington in the form of a mammoth wheel of cheese. The gift to President Thomas Jefferson, reportedly the work of 900 cows, included no Federalist milk, owing to Jefferson’s feud with that faction.
Jefferson, who wanted the smallest possible federal government, was delighted with the symbolism — and the cheese.
Kristen Demeo, a kindergarten teacher in Adams who recently published a book about the Cheshire cheese, said the modern dairy milestone also deserves its place in history.
“I’m hoping that it’s not forgotten,” Demeo said. “I guess you have to move with what century you’re in.”
The current law was written in 2002, by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat on the Senate farming committee who has long championed the dairy industry....
I know he's supposed to be a great liberal and all, but he is also in favor of the spying and seeing no big deal about it.
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