Got subsidies?

Name a white powder that is consumed by millions, generates huge profits, and is smuggled in and out of the United States.  Nope.  It’s milk.  Here’s another classic story of how our farm program wastes billions.

For years, the government has periodically purchased powdered milk
— as well as butter and cheese, the other byproducts of raw milk — as
part of a congressionally mandated price-support program for milk
producers. By 2003, the Agriculture Department had accumulated a record
1.4 billion pounds of powdered milk in warehouses and in a huge
limestone cave in the Kansas City area.

The bulging stores
coincided with a drought that left livestock pastures burned in about a
dozen states. Some livestock owners were faced with selling their
herds, Farrish said. Giving them the powdered milk as an emergency
source of feed seemed like a good way to help out….

In 2003,
the government released 390 million pounds of powdered milk for the
ranchers, giving it to the states for $1 a truckload.

The true value of the milk was somewhere on the order of 3 thousand dollars a truck load (the article is a little unclear) so you can imagine that the milk did not long stay with the ranchers.

Thanks to Ramin Seddig for the pointer.