Milk and money

As a strict measure of its faithfulness to letting the market choose winners and losers, the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact fails entirely. As policy for promoting economic diversity, food safety and open space, however, it is an important program for the region.

The compact helps dairy farmers by guaranteeing a minimum price for milk. Though it has cost consumers approximately 15 cents per gallon since 1996, it returns to them at least that much value through other means. As members of Congress debates the future of the compact — which was set to end tomorrow but has been postponed by a judge’s ruling Tuesday — they should keep in mind that their decision affects far more than a few small farmers.

The compact helps keep local farms in business not only through the price support but also by keeping enough other farmers at work. That means a dairy infrastructure of grain dealers, truck drivers and farm machinery sales people will remain. And that means jobs where they are needed most, in the smallest towns whose residents cannot simply turn to alternative industries. This is not mere nostalgia for the bucolic past, but an immediate dollars and cents issue.

Having a healthy dairy industry is far more useful and considerably less expensive to Maine taxpayers than sitting by and watching these farms go under, then setting loose its retraining programs and hoping for the best. On a national level, the compact prevents an overdependence on a few large Midwestern sources for this important and highly perishable food. And it gives New England states more local say on controversial issues such as bovine growth hormone.

Certainly, there would be less support for the compact if it stood alone as the sole agricultural support states enjoyed. But the sheer number and variety of federal programs for crops or for not growing crops, for research and marketing, for electricity, grazing and water, etc., makes singling out this relatively small program seem more than a little short-sighted. None of the Midwestern representatives so angry about the compact have suggested, for instance, that Congress end the millions of dollars spent on local farm research or cut the power lines at the Hoover Dam.

Yet the dairy compact is in no sense different than these programs — or it is different only in the sense that it helps farmers in this region rather than the usual pattern of helping farmers in the Midwest. Unless Congress has some hidden reason to single out for punishment New England dairy farmers, it should support the compact as a sensible part of the nation’s agricultural policies.