Progressive Dairyman Poll on Dairy Policy

Vermont's three Members of Congress have sponsored two bills on dairy policy (see Dairy Policy Bills). There are also other dairy policy proposals under active consideration. Some have been introduced as bills in Congress and some have not.

Progressive Dairyman magazine recently provided a roundup of the various proposals and conducted a poll. The following link is a good place to start, then follow the links from there for more detail:

PD POLL: Dairy Reform [Updated July 2]

The proposals included in the Progressive Dairyman poll were:

• Federal Milk Marketing Improvement Act of 2009 (S.1645) aka the Specter-Casey Bill
• Farmers Union proposal
• Holstein USA Plan (Dairy Price Stabilization Plan)
• NMPF Plan (Foundation for the Future)
• Dairy Growth Management Initiative
• Dairy Price Stabilization Act of 2010 (H.R.5288) aka the Costa Bill
• Ration-all
• Strategic Dairy Reserve

(Progressive Dairyman did not include the DPI Plan or S.3531.)

The "Holstein USA Plan" aka the Dairy Price Stabilization Plan is the plan favored by Dairy Farmers Working Together (see Growth Management Plan).

Progressive Dairyman has a concise side-by-side summary of three of the above plans (Specter-Casey, the Dairy Price Stabilization Plan and the NMPF Plan): Part 1 from the 7/21/10 issue and Part 2 from the 8/11/10 issue.

The results of the PD poll were: Specter-Casey 67%, NMPF 15%, Dairy Price Stabilization Plan 12%, all others 6%. However, the magazine editors felt that the results were skewed by a Pennsylvania consumer write-in campaign as they explain here.

This raises an interesting question. How should we decide dairy policy? Should we be influenced by a consumer write-in campaign? Or...Should we trust the experts?