Ask any Organic or local independent dairy farmer supplying a fluid milk plant, the most beneficial thing that we can do to help the dairy industry is to eliminate Federal Marketing Orders in the USDA. This would be free, can be done without congress, and would lower the cost of organic and local milk to the consumer.
Federal Marketing Orders are bureaucratic wastes of money who have been given the authority to create, administer, and judicially interpret their own laws in the executive branch. For reasons related to government waste (DOGE) and constitutional standing (Chevron Deference and countless other recent supreme court cases) these agencies need to eliminated. For reasons related to national health and the viability of our small local and organic farms these agencies also need to be eliminated because they are legislative hand outs to the major billion dollar agricultural corporations.
Some orders are rather benign like the kiwi board, which sets national grading standards. While other (like dairy and raisins pre 2016) are ways for billion dollar corporations to write their own laws that enrich themselves on the backs of small independent farmers. The USDA is more than happy to kowtow to the corporations and do whatever they say because they are given lifetime employment in cozy jobs. This is done off the backs of the us consumer and small independent farmers.
Dairy for instance, is recently going through an order update and has plans to dramatically raise the price of fluid milk on the consumer. Pundits may say that this is being done at the request of the dairy farmer but its not. Large billion dollar corporations are given the ability to “block vote” their membership and they control over 80% of the milk supply so really this is being done at the request of 5-10 large billion dollar corporations. The end result will be that the US consumer will pay much more for milk, small independent farms and organic farms will pay massive subsidies to the billion dollar corporations, and the government will get lifetime employment in a meaningless but well paying jobs. Yes that is correct, the price of organic milk is artificially too high so that money can be taken from those small farmers and given to mega farmers for billion dollar corporations. This is being done by your government at the request of billion dollar corporations and it happens without any legislative or judicial oversight. Don’t believe me? Ask Organic Valley.
The best part is though that since these agencies are not administrated with legislative authorization from congress, they can be eliminated without congresses approval. Simply install Thomas Masse as the ag secretary and he can “modify” the orders to make them meaningless. Several parts of the US (Idaho for example) operate large and viable dairy industries without Agricultural Marketing Service Orders. Eliminating them will do nothing except lower the price of organic milk and increase the viability of independent local dairy farms and the organic industry.