The Agency of Natural Resources and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets have just published their latest Farm to Plate Food System Plan and I cannot understand how 130 people could produce a report that chooses — not fails, but chooses — not to speak plainly to farmers.
The chief reason farmers are in crisis is that they operate in a system that encourages them to deploy the conventional, i.e. chemical-intensive, modality, which by design overproduces Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMO) markets, which keeps milk prices low for consumers and manufacturers, and is indifferent to its social, economic and ecological consequences.
The report is brimming with colorful photographs all showing how wonderful life on the Vermont farm is in spite of the grim statistics and charts about failing farms that it suggests can be addressed through education or by enlisting in this or that new Vermont program.
The 2020 Food System Plan correctly says that “the number of dairy farms [in Vermont] has decreased by 91% over the past nine decades …The downside of dairy’s dominant role in Vermont’s food systems is that when dairy suffers the entire food system economy of the state suffers too.”
But it also says: “The primary challenge facing the dairy industry is the lack of price stability … Most Vermont dairy farmers believe a fundamental restructuring [of the price mechanism] is required to better cover the real costs of production and to minimize price volatility.”
It is fundamentally incorrect to suggest – or to cite others who suggest – that the price of milk should take the cost of production into consideration. The plan fails to acknowledge that Vermont hasn’t the competency to control supply, and even if we could, the federal system allows farmers to expand whenever they choose thereby mooting supply control’s effectiveness.
As the authors surely know, the only way conventional Vermont dairy farmers have had to hold their costs down was by deploying the conventional model, which means consolidating and expanding into CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) housing between 800 and 5,000 cows. But the authors do not tell the farmers that the conventional modality is the primary cause of 45-50% of the pollution entering Lake Champlain or that by following this path they are making their own dire situation worse.
The Food System Plan admits that “Unlike the federal system or the conventional cooperatives, organic cooperatives exercise supply control management … In 2009 the New England net average cost of production for a conventional dairy farms was $16.19/cwt but the price paid in Middlebury was $12.41 … Milk prices declined sharply in 2009 as a result of oversupply and a decrease in domestic and international demand for dairy products … but [as a result of supply control] Vermont organic milk producers had an estimated average cost of production of $25 but still received a price of $27.75.”
This is where the plan leaves off its discussion of dairy price and cost of production but then goes on to suggest that the state should commission a study to “… recommend methods for improving the marketing of Vermont agricultural products … [or] … assist in the diversification of agricultural products produced on a farm; [or] … increase the amount of Vermont agricultural products that are purchased by school nutrition programs in the State … where demand from schools would create a viable market for Vermont farmers.”
But the plan does not say that the national supply must rise or fall at least 2% just to move the FMMO price by even a penny. Even if all Vermont consumers, including students and institutions, were to suddenly raise their consumption by 20x, effectively removing the entire Vermont supply (which would mean that every man, woman and child would have to consume more than a gallon per day), the national supply would be reduced by 1%, which is below the 2% threshold. The FMMO price would still be $2-5/cwt below the median Vermont dairy farmer’s cost, and the economic, ecological and social consequences of conventional dairying in Vermont would still be ruinous. And even if all Vermont consumers were to raise their consumption by 40x or more than two gallons for every man, woman and child per day thereby meeting the 2% threshold, the first thing conventional U.S. dairy farmers would do – with the full support of USDA and VAAFM – would be to go back to the bank, take on more debt, with which to buy more cows and equipment, to build bigger barns and to acquire more land on which to apply more of the substances that pollute the lake and flood the milk markets.
Notably, VAAFM and the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund wrote a Farm to Plate Strategic Plan in 2011, when the situation was precisely the same — same pretty pictures, same depressing facts, same useless advice. Notwithstanding, it boldly set these two goals that we would if we followed the plan meet in 2020:
Goal 10: Vermont’s dairy industry will support supply control management policies, instate processing infrastructure and diversification opportunities.
Goal 11: The majority of Vermont farms and food processing facilities will be profitable with a stable cash flow and increased returns to producers.
This is 2020 and these goals have not been met. And now just as then they cannot be met and here are the reasons, which have also not changed:
1. Vermont dairy farms are controlled by the federal milk marketing order system and it is beyond Vermont’s competency to control supply and, therefore, beyond its competency to control price.
2. The state of Vermont obstinately refuses year after year after year to acknowledge that the conventional farming paradigm is the principal driver of overproduction, rural economic decay, low milk prices, farm attrition and lake pollution.
If, on the other hand, the state were to manage the conversion of Vermont’s entire dairy industry to organic Vermont could, in three years, convert an industry presently losing $100 million/year from operations into an industry making a taxable profit of $78 million/year; it could in three years cut Vermont agriculture’s 45-50% contribution to lake pollution by half and at the same time reduce by half the taxpayers’ $135 million/year cost of myriad state programs, all intended on their faces to “save agriculture and protect the lake” and all failing to do either.
The plan would not save the CAFOs; for that, a buyer must be found willing to buy 2.2 billion pounds of milk for $25/cwt when the same product can be purchased for $18.
But conversion to organic would save those farmers milking fewer than 200 cows, the majority, and those who would rather change than die. The plan is described in my letter to Gov. Phil Scott on Jan. 26, 2019.
Source: vtdigger.org
