Cherries left to rot on the ground

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by kazenatsu, Sep 9, 2017.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Government law requires farmers to set aside a portion of their crops to rot on the ground. All the while the U.S. is importing these same crops from other countries! This just makes it more difficult for American farms to compete with foreign imports, not to mention the terrible terrible food waste!

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    One of the legacies from the Great Depression that persist to this day is governmental policy affecting agriculture. A Michigan cherry farmer recently illustrated how ridiculous these policies can be, particularly something known as “marketing orders.”

    Under a marketing order, growers of certain agricultural commodities form what is, essentially, a cartel and turn over crop supply decisions to boards overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (or a similar agency at the state level), which are empowered to try to “stabilize” markets. During bumper years, the government sets restrictive quotas to artificially suppress the supply of crops, thereby raising prices higher than the free-market rate.

    Such arrangements were authorized by the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1937. Today there are marketing orders for roughly three dozen agricultural products, including milk, fruits, vegetables, nuts and specialty crops. One of those marketing orders, the Cherry Industry Administrative Board, covers tart cherries grown in seven states – Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.

    The CIAB recently directed farmers to prevent a portion of their crops from making it to the market in an attempt to bump up prices. For cherry farmer Marc Santucci, owner of Santucci Farm in Traverse City, Michigan, this order, which came just four days before his harvest, meant that he had to dump 40,000 pounds of his tart cherries – 14 percent of his crop. The CIAB even sends people out to ensure that farmers have dumped their crops on the ground, where they are left to rot.

    Santucci decided to protest the order in a very public way by posting a photo of the dumped cherries on Facebook. The image went viral, and has been shared nearly 67,000 times.

    “I posted it because I want people to know that we sometimes do stupid things in this country in an attempt to do the right thing – we end up doing the wrong thing,” Santucci told UpNorthLive.com, the website of a local NBC affiliate in Traverse City.

    The move is particularly foolish, Santucci said in a separate Facebook post last month, because of the global nature of agricultural markets. “It is a shame that we had to drop 14 percent of our cherries while at the same time the United States was importing the equivalent of 200 million pounds of cherries, or 40 percent of U.S. consumption,” he asserted. “The only way we are going to stop the continued growth in imports is to compete head-to-head, not with one arm tied behind our back.”

    Tart cherries are not like regular sweet cherries. They have a shorter shelf life and need to be processed immediately. That costs money, so he would have had to pay money to give them away to charity. Typically tart cherries are processed into pie fillings or jam (and sometimes tart cherry juice).

    A more in-depth analysis of the situation here, for anyone who cares to really get into the gritty details: http://modernfarmer.com/2016/08/cherry-dumping-farmer/

    I saw one of the comments suggest this was an unintended result of Obama negotiating a trade deal with the EU. Of course, the country of Turkey is part of a customs union with the EU, which mains a trade deal with the EU is effectively a trade deal with Turkey also. NAFTA apparently never had much impact on cherries because cherries are not easy to grow in the warmer climate of Mexico. But cherries can both be grown in Turkey and the labor costs are low.

    And we wonder why American farms can't compete. Apparently this trade deal was passed without any thought about how it would interact with laws that were already in existence affecting American farmers. Because if you look at this, these market orders side by side the trade agreement, it doesn't make any sense, there are conflicting aims. On the one hand, the market orders are intended to keep prices up for cherry producers by restricting supply. On the other hand, the trade agreement was obviously intended to do just the opposite, to expand the supply and lower prices for consumers. The government's right hand doesn't know what its left hand is doing.

    The issue is that American farms have to dump their produce. Farms in Turkey do not.
    With the trade agreement in place, that gives Turkey an unfair advantage over American tart cherry producers.
    40% of America's tart cherries coming from Turkey is a lot.

    And the fact that American farmers are forced to dump 15% of their crops some years probably doesn't help.

    It's just completely asinine. At the very least, foreign imports should not be allowed while American farmers are forced to let their crops go to waste.
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2017
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  2. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Are the cherries being left for fertilizer or some other necessary agricultural process?
     
  3. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The government prevents them from putting tart cherries into the market for profit. It's based on production capability, and they send inspectors out to make sure the farms comply. If you decided to give them away to a non-profit cause (which very few farmers do) you would have to prove it (have receipts).

    You might ask why an organization like a food bank doesn't just take the cherries, but most non-profits are not going to drive all the way out to a farm to collect a ton of cherries and then process them. At the very least they would have to de-pit them and then freeze the crop. I suppose it's theoretically possible for a charity to take the cherries but it's just not practical, since the cherries can at no time be sold and would have to be accounted for at every stage of the process (transportation, processing, distribution), and I'm sure the crop itself only accounts for a small fraction of the price of the finished product.
     
  4. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    My grandmother worked in a school cafeteria and they loathed having to use those free government cherries. They were forced to use them by the Department of Agriculture. They were so bitter nobody could eat them. They did absolutely everything they could to put using those things off until the very last second.
     
  5. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    And here I thought I lived in a free country. The government should have the power to prohibit farmers from using of dangerous chemicals and growing crops that harm consumers or the environment but they should NOT have the power to arbitrarily dictate what farmers do with the crops they are permitted to grow. Clearly, the U.S. Constitution requires an amendment to repeal the commerce clause and limit the regulation of private property to aspects of safety and environmental protection.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2017
  6. james M

    james M Banned

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    why?? if people want to buy what you think is dangerous they should be free to do it- right? How does govt know what is dangerous. Detroit water was said to be clean by govt.
     
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  7. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    Did you read the post? Basically, this year farmers had to not harvest about 15% of their crop due to the Cherry Industry Administrative Board ordering it, so as to keep cherry prices artificially high.
     
  8. james M

    james M Banned

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    Very cool!! We should have a National Soviet Industry Administrative Board to regulate production volume and prices for all goods and services! Why do we bother with Republican capitalism anyway?
     
  9. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Because they would poison us and wreck the environment.

    Sure. Nothing should be banned from trade as long as it's safely packaged and accurately labeled.
    But nobody has the right to poison consumers or pollute the land.

    Because the experts tell them. The fact that they lie to our faces about the facts indicates that we have major flaws in our form of government.
     
  10. james M

    james M Banned

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    libsocialist Democrats have 10001 ways to interfere with the free market because they lack the IQ to understand capitalism. Thus, Republicans are our only hope.
     
  11. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    They're not my hope. Republicans support capitalism but only in the captive market, not the free market.

    The single most important characteristic of the captive market is the dominance of patent and copyright monopolies. The same laws that protect monopolies from competition also serve to keep individuals from employing themselves, no matter how ambitious and resourceful they may be. This is why the vast majority of Americans depend so much on jobs.

    The single most important characteristic of the free market is the absence of ownership over art and technology, thereby permitting maximum competition and opportunity for individuals ambitious and resourceful enough to employ themselves.

    Democrats can see the negative consequences of the captive market, especially when it comes to poverty and the disparity of wealth. They know something isn't right about the way the economy works but, instead of working to liberate the captive market by abolishing the ownership of art and technology, they just want to tax the monopolies and their rich executives and investors in order to compensate the poor through benefit programs. Liberal officials don't actually care about the poor beyond the excuses they provide for expanding government bureaucracy. It's just their own sleezy way of getting rich.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2017
  12. james M

    james M Banned

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    absurd inane gibberish of course:
    1) The greatest free market economists support patents
    2) free markets are based on private property; an invention is patentable private property
    3) patents expire so only a small % of GDP is in patentable products so not single most important sector
    4) patents encourage and help pay for new inventions so critical to private property based free markets.
     
  13. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    1. Anyone who supports IP is NOT a free market capitalist.
    2. Free markets are based on real (physical) private property which the law infringes upon when it favors IP instead.
    3. IP doesn't exist because it's fair but because it's fabulously lucrative.
    4. IP only encourage research among monopolies. It prohibits the reproduction of art and technology by anyone else under criminal penalties that are worse than violent crimes. In effect doing more to inhibit innovation than to promote it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2017
  14. james M

    james M Banned

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    absurd since Friedman did. He his considered greatest free market capitalist ever. Do you understand now?
     
  15. james M

    james M Banned

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    actually intellectual property is real property
     
  16. james M

    james M Banned

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    if 1000 people write hit songs that others stole and got rich on 1000 people would say, according to natural law, it's unfair. Sorry you lose again.
     
  17. james M

    james M Banned

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    makes no sense since monopolies are illegal. Care to try again?
     
  18. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Yes. I understand that you admire Friedman. But you're also carrying a major misconception in believing that he was a free market capitalist while advocating IP.

    No, it isn't. Ideas are imaginary, not physically tangible.

    Censorship is unfair. Everyone in the bottom 99% loses every day in the captive market.

    Tell that to every publicly traded manufacturer and publisher in America. You should learn to type correctly before attempting to lecture me on economics.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2017
  19. james M

    james M Banned

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    How can it be a misconception if it is a simple matter and the entire world of Ph.D economists believes it??
     
  20. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Because IP turns the free market captive.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2017
  21. james M

    james M Banned

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    if someone has an idea for a great new invention, especially one that took years of education and experience to develop, human nature or natural law will encourage him to claim it as personal property, and others will agree and grant him a patent by virtue of natural law. this is true even in communist countries so you are really way off in left field. Sorry to rock your world.
     
  22. james M

    james M Banned

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    BS of course. How does a guy who gets a life saving drug lose when the company who sells the drug would never have invented the drug if it could not recover the research costs??????????
     
  23. james M

    james M Banned

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    you mean you think they are all monopolies?? Please name best examples if you dare
     
  24. james M

    james M Banned

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    all the world's economists disagree thinking patents are consistent with free markets. You are way way off in left field. Sorry
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2017
  25. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Greed is the part of human nature that permits us to ignore the logical errors in our standards of fairness and justice. People deserve to be recognized for their ideas but recognition doesn't require ownership or exclusive rights- that's overkill. Your mind, and everything in it, naturally belongs to you and nobody should have the power to prohibit you from using it. So there's no such thing as piracy in a free market. If someone wants to keep their ideas to themselves, they can keep them secret. Otherwise, if they want to make money from their ideas, they have to expose them to the public somehow and that alone should give everyone else the right to reuse them.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2017

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