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[dryrunguy]

I was just reading about the upcoming once 17 years cicada invasion. Any of you living in the affected areas? That should be some spectacle.

The last one, at least here, was a whole bunch of nothing. But I'll never forget the one before that. That would have been 1987, the summer before I went to college. For the entire summer, my sheep were absolutely COVERED with cicadas. Every day. It didn't bother the sheep because they had about an inch of wool. But it definitely looked like a Biblical plague.

Maybe the difference was that was in Ohio, but I don't know why there was such a big difference between the two.

[JazzNU]

I was just reading about the upcoming once 17 years cicada invasion. Any of you living in the affected areas? That should be some spectacle.

Those damn cicadas annoy me every year. Will it be worse this year? Not sure. I don't recall it being much worse the last time this one came around, but given the timing, I too was likely in a different state and that may have been enough of a difference.

I've been more wary of the return of the spotted lantern fly.

[Suliso]

Well, it's one of those once in 17 years groups. Whether you'll see them depends on where exactly in Pennsylvania you live.

[JazzNU]

Earlier post from the same guy. Don't want to highlight them too much, but sometimes you get to see the (expletive) craziness of Q theory and here's a great snapshot on the mental gymnastics they do to reach their convoluted theories.

[ti-amie]

Jazz that literally made my head hurt.
How do you even begin to refute "thinking" like that?

[ponchi101]

That's the problem. When you have gone that deep into the crazy, where do you start?

[ti-amie]

[JazzNU]

Excuse my ignorance here. Reform of the milk price formula means what exactly? I would guess they need an increase in the price. Costs of a lot of things have increased, but milk has remained steady so easy to imagine hard to operate farms with the 1980 revenue. But truly not sure if that's what is meant since there is milk that costs $5 too.

[dryrunguy]

Small-scale dairy cattle farming has been on decline for many years now. Small dairy farmers cannot compete with corporate dairy farms that are able to achieve massive economies of scale when it comes to everything... This is not anything new. Though I can imagine COVID may have made it even worse.

[ponchi101]

When I worked for USDA I once made an analysis of milk prices in Venezuela Vs in the USA. The share of the final price of milk at the supermarket, as kept by the farmers, was only 10% (Vennieland was around 40%). So milk farmers in the US really are having a hard time making a profit. And that was in the 1990's. No doubt that by now it is much harder.

[skatingfan]

Excuse my ignorance here. Reform of the milk price formula means what exactly? I would guess they need an increase in the price. Costs of a lot of things have increased, but milk has remained steady so easy to imagine hard to operate farms with the 1980 revenue. But truly not sure if that's what is meant since there is milk that costs $5 too.

This is why Canada has supply management, and every dairy farm has a production limit & so a guaranteed income. My understanding is that there is too much supply in the dairy system in the US which has suppressed prices, and that's why the US wanted more access to the Canadian market.

[ponchi101]

The entire American system is based on suppressing production. The US system is capable of producing so much of almost all agricultural products that if all farmers, or even Big Agra, were able to produce at 100% of their capabilities, the oversupply would make prices collapse. It sounds not good, as some people will say that there are hungry people in the world and we actually need more food, but the reality is that without the USDA subsidy and price control system in place, small farmers would be wiped out immediately.
The system is set up so that farmers get subsidies by leaving areas of their land untouched, and therefore not producing. Together with the Commodities' Futures Market, it allows the smaller farmers to stay in business. In the past, prior to the creation of futures, all harvests would reach the market at the same time, causing crashes in prices that left entire regions wiped out.
The system isn't perfect, and Europe has a similar system of subsidies for its farmers. But it is the only way, so far, to avoid the periodic price crashes that hurt everybody because, after a price crash and large percentages of farmers are wiped out of the market, the next crop would not be planted and you would have BOOM & BUST cycles, in which nobody won.

[JazzNU]

This is why Canada has supply management, and every dairy farm has a production limit & so a guaranteed income. My understanding is that there is too much supply in the dairy system in the US which has suppressed prices, and that's why the US wanted more access to the Canadian market.

Thanks for all the replies. Definitely too much supply in the US. That part I did know, while there may have been too much years ago as well, the problem is much more pronounced now. The nut "milk" market is booming here.

[Suliso]

Both US and EU could produce a lot more food if there was any need. In general there is no lack of food in the World. What is lacking is financial means for some populations to buy enough of it plus war induced distribution problems.

[Deuce]

Humans are the only species that drink milk from other species. Someone, somewhere along the way, decided that there was a financial profit to be made by doing this, and the industry was born. And then marketing took over, of course.
The fact that humans are the only species to do this tells me that nature intended milk to nourish the young of one's own species.