I know I posted this link before, but, today I wanted to compare the present milk price crisis with the 1930s.
Drawn up by LaGuardia, the pact called for the dealers to pay $2.15 for all milk purchased between August 25 and October 31, 1939; this forty-five percent price increase became official the next day when it was ratified at a jubilant DFU convention at union headquarters in Utica, New York.
When these good people went on strike, their farm milk price was over $21/cwt in today's dollars. The settlement amounted to $33.44/cwt, in 2009 dollars.
Little by little.
Maybe this could happen if the farmers hired Tony Soprano as their PR man.
ReplyDeleteI heard Jimmy Hoffa is available?
ReplyDeleteThe farmers in Europe went on strike this summer and they were getting the equivalent of $17.00 per cwt at the time - we were at $9.00. Regardless we are getting ripped-off - folks around here are starting to get real tired of it; soon I think the tide will turn and there will be an uprising - the only thing that will stop it is fair prices and I don't see those coming any time soon. Everyone in the business knows this is too much risk and work to feed folks that don't know or care. I hope they all like tofu and grits because soon that's all there will be.
Jeff
http://www.nmpf.org/files/file/NMPF-ltr-to-Sec-Vilsack-on-cheese-stocks-2009-12-04.pdf
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting update on cheese inventories. But no big deal to NMPF.
So what was the production per cow, and cost per cwt in 1939. It would seem that these data would also be needed to make a more meanngful comparison from the situation then to now
ReplyDelete