The federal government forces certain fruit and vegetable (and nut) growers to limit the sale of their goods. Just ask tart cherry growers.
In July, a Michigan tart cherry farmer posted a photo on Facebook showing piles of his wasted cherries that will rot on the ground. He says 14 percent of his cherries are going to be wasted due to the Department of Agriculture’s tart cherry marketing order that limits the supply of tart cherries.
This summer isn’t the first time marketing orders have resulted in swaths of wasted tart cherries. In 2009, 30 million pounds of cherries rotted on the ground, which is allegedly “enough to serve a cherry pie to every resident of Michigan, with 5 million pies left over.” The 30 million pounds of tart cherries restricted from that year constituted 65 percent of the market.
Fruit and vegetable marketing orders are a relic of the New Deal, authorized by the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. These orders are supposed to stabilize prices for commodities.
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