Beau Duffy, spokesman for Congressman Paul Tonko, tells me there was no money for dairy farmers in the stimulus bill. But Tonko has written to the U.S. secretary of agriculture urging that federal nutrition programs buy up dairy products to help prop up producer prices, which have been falling. It's a sound idea in a major recession to help out both poor people and dairy farmers by boosting programs such as WIC, buying up and giving away cheese, and distributing milk powder overseas. As of yesterday, Tonko hadn't received a reply to his Feb. 23 letter. It's good to see that the Amsterdam Democrat, who for many years represented a substantially rural Assembly district, is not neglecting agriculture in his new role as a congressman representing a much larger area including Albany, Schenectady and Troy. (Both congressional candidates in the more rural 20th District would help themselves by supporting Tonko's initiatives.)
On another agricultural front, the credit crunch is apparently not seen as as big a problem as the decline in commodity prices, according to the comments on this post from blogger Rod Dreher, who was responding to a typically apocalyptic post at Kunstler.com by the Saratoga Springs-based writer James Howard Kunstler.
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