Sunday, September 6, 2009

SE Case



(click image to enlarge)

The New York Times and NPR jointly requested the court in the South East dairy case to make public some documents.
The court agreed and the defendants appealed.

Howery, the dairy farmer plaintiff’s law firm filed a motion supporting the release of the documents, rumored to be 90,000 pages, in question.

There are 28 pages in the document which not only support release of the document but also, indicate scope of the case. Above is just one page of the document filed September 4, 2009. The one page alone, makes clear the need to clean house in the dairy industry.

5 comments:

  1. Oh John, there you go again!!! Blamin'all the sins of dairying on DFA/Dean! And just because there's all manner of EVIDENCE to support you??I mean, what is this salacious rag The New York Times or that "pinko" NPR tryin' to do smearing that "god" of dairy marketing, "Mr. Red Suspenders" his own self... and all these technical terms:"silent rebates","fixing prices", "anti-competitive practices","refusal to compete for raw milk","outrage independant producers"??? Whata' you tryin' to say, John?? That stuff you n' Pete been harping about for years about DFA/Dean might actually "stick"???
    Who'da thunk it??
    Gotta be a dark day for all those DFA "true believers"
    Later. Nate Wilson :)

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  2. Will the truth help; will justice be served? Time will tell.
    They will try to keep telling us that "this problem is too comlex for simple answers", I say they're wrong. Take Robert Lieb's idea of selling 10% of the nations milking herd for beef at a price point. It's a simple idea and a pretty good one. Problem being most will not see the reasoning or logic behind it and will, in their ignorance, reject this idea and many others, but continue to passively submit to whatever the so called market dictates to them. These farmers hope others will go out of business first bringing the "market" back, they wait for somebody, somehow to help them, the next government program...just enough so they can hang on. But this is skewed thinking, even if they are the last dairy farmer in this country they will still be beholden to the market manipulation and corruption we now face.
    Soon all of the profitable milk contracts from last year will run-out, will this help turn the tide and bring more farmers to reason?
    It is my sincerest hope that we will do what needs to be done, this is our wrong to right, not something to pass on to our children. These devils count of us to continue to be passive, I pray they are counting wrong.
    Jeff Suehring

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  3. Jeff,
    A little more expansion on my 10% idea. I think that if most dairymen sat down and looked at their records and analyzed them they would find that the bottom 10% would be pretty easy to part with once you started to find the high SCC cows, long days in milk and not pregnant, chronic lame cows, chronic cystic and just plain problem animals. Or maybe I am the only guy that holds on to these critters too long? I would be willing to bet that as an industry if the dairyman would take it upon himself to run this self regulated CWT program that they would find themselves with less problems in the long run and ultimately with less headaches. In march I looked for just such cows and unloaded them and it did my herd alot of good and to be honest with you I do not miss any of them. We have all been told by all the "experts to keep the barns full no matter what and to "dairy based on cash flow". I would like to hear from anyone who can cash flow now. expand expand expand is all you hear. price is bad maximize milk production? I say we need to contract a bit and see what happens. maybe 10% is extreme try 5% and see what happens first. 40 cow herd 2 less cows 100cow herd 5 less cows 500 cow herd 25 less cows 1000 cow herd 50 less cows 2000 cow herd 100 less cows excetera. on an individual basis this wont hurt too bad but on an industry wide scale it would be huge for all who work as dairymen and women and need some relief from this current mess. one last selling point I will bet that we would only have to do this every so often when we were forgotten again by our coops and dairys that depend on us for raw milk. Let them scream and wail for a change if they want to import more make a little less. also, with this system no one quits entirely unless they want to and it would find a place for some of these sexed semen heifers that are coming on, more on that later.
    Robert Lieb

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  4. the colleges are always stressing get bigger, if we did not get bigger where would all the colleges place all their ag grads.

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  5. Robert,
    I hope you get back here; I've been busy so I put off reading some of the comments until today. I like your plan and agree with your premise. But to reason with some dairy farmers is like talking to a barn door... we need a plan to put this or other good ideas in place. How? I just don't know; there are many road-blocks and there will be a ton of publicity against such a plan. Some of the very folks (processors and so on) that should be supporting it will surely cry the most.
    Furthermore, I really don't like the government supports, but I do think we need more oversite to ensure the free market works properly (John has provided us more than enough evidence to show it's not even close to right) and to curb imports. It seems to me that whenever there is trade dispute this country's leaders always seem to fall short in supporting the best interest of the United States.
    Anyway Robert, I do like your idea and agree everyone can find some cows to cull - but to get everyone to do it?
    In addition I really, really think we need to curb the flow of imports. It makes no sense to me that we need to "balance" our imports with exports to sustain a decent price. It makes me very angry that Congress has been so lax for so long in this area and has helped sell this country out year after year, decade after decade. The natural resources in this country and the people that harvest them provide the majority of Americans with an abundance of food and raw materials, that support industry, provide housing and many of the staples needed not just for survival but they also provide a great deal of comfort and security to this nation. I don't want the government deciding what's best for Dairy, we need to do this ourselves, somehow? We don't need (or want) anymore USDA programs or taxpayer bailouts. But we do need fair markets, fair and balanced trade, and our elected officials to look out for this country; not just to get us by today but also for tomorrow.
    Sorry for the mixed-up mess of ideas, but since this comment is on an older post I'm sure very few will ever read this, so it's okay to be jumbled.
    Jeff

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