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Comment by simlevesque | Hacker News Reader

The same thing happens in Canada.

For some farms.

I have relatives that are dairy farmers in Ontario and they seem to be doing ok. There's some kind of collective in place that establishes production quotas and you have to pay for the right to produce. Maybe more commodity products could benefit from this type of planning.

This is also why milk costs 50% more in Canada than in the US. Still, a reliable supply of food reduces the risk of famine which is more important than a purely competitive market.

It makes Canadian dairy products rather expensive. Helping businesses collude to drive up prices and increase profits really should not be the role of government. Cartels are good for their members, but not for the rest of society.

> Helping businesses collude to drive up prices and increase profits really should not be the role of government.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is to say it stabilizes a strategically important sector and establishes a minimum wage for dairy farmers. I'd rather pay more for milk than have desperate farmers killing themselves at record rates. There's a societal cost to that as well.

and India (as mentioned in the article) [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India

and France (as mentioned in the article) [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/world/europe/france-farm-...

If anyone was wondering, the farmer death per day is 33.6 per day in India (it was mentioned as a single number since 1995).

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