Spitzer not a farm guy

Days are getting very short, less than twelve hours of sunlight now. This means dragging a flashlight along to every milking and hard times getting any crop work done between chores.

I have been asked to aid some other farmers in drafting a letter to the NY Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, about the current fad among milk processors of marketing so called BST-free milk. BST is a naturally occurring hormone, synthesized by Monsanto, and used by some farmers to increase their cows' appetites and thus their milk production. It has always been rather controversial, even though it is impossible to detect differences between the milk of cows that have been given it and cows that haven't. For the record, we have never used it here at Northview.

However, of late, some milk companies have asked their farmers to sign pledges not to use it so the the companies can market their milk as BST free (even though it really isn't, as all cows produce this hormone naturally). No problem there. We need to offer consumers what they want and if there is a market, good. And I repeat we don't use it here at our farm anyhow.

Problem is the milk companies are charging consumers a whole dollar more a gallon and paying the farmers not one cent for producing it for them....even though it becomes more expensive to produce milk without it. It is just another example of so-called farmer cooperatives becoming instead for profit companies and making those profits by stepping on the necks of the real producers of our food. I will gladly help draft the letter, although I don't expect that it will accomplish anything. Spitzer is busy running for governor, as he has been since he took office as AG. He has no interest in fairness to farmers, or as far as I can see in upstate at all. NY is bleeding dairy farmers like a gushing torrent, with farms all around us selling the cows and looking for new lives.
Unfair practices like this will just speed the death of the state's number one industry. The fools.