the political economy of milk
why hasn't Cuba's milk gone sour
by Ilker Belek
Since the first years of the revolution, Cuba has provided a half liter of milk everyday to children between the years of 0-7 and to pregnant mothers. And it isn't packaged milk, it's fresh. And what's more, it is delivered everyday to their doorstep.
Cuba is doing other things as well. It provides free education and healthcare at all levels. The proportion of the budget that its Health department receives is among the highest in the World, it produces all of its own vaccinations, et cetera.
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Let's look at the problems arising from our newly started milk distribution program here in Turkey, and use it to underline a few points which help to define the structural limits of Capitalism.
1- Milk is a fundamental source of nutrition for people of all ages. Before the age that a child goes to school, however, it is especially essential. For this reason Cuba distributes milk to children of all ages 0-7 and to pregnant women.
For us, the reason why a social project to distribute milk to children of pre-school age has not been organized has to do with the way in which the milk would be distributed: who would take milk to each house.
This type of work requires not only a comprehensive and active involvement by society, but a public system that is specialized, purposeful, and thinks not of money but of people. As it obsesses with shrinking the size of its own government, Turkey doesn't have the ability to come up with such an organization. And it is children who pay for this fact from even before they start school.
2- Pasteurized milk is good but fresh milk is even better. If the conditions of pasteurization go wrong there is a risk of microbial contamination. More importantly, the storage vessels of pasteurized milk are likely to show carcinogenic effects in the long run. So the best milk is that which comes in glass bottles.
It is interesting to note then, for this reason, that in the market in Turkey it is encouraged to drink fresh milk from glass bottles while pasteurized milk is that which is being distributed in schools.
3- Capitalism's objective laws find their ways into everything. You can't stop them. Even if you plan a social project this will eventually benefit monopolies.
This is true as well for the distribution of milk. Would the giant AKP (social justice party) bother going in and working with small villages in order to collect milk? Of course not, it would leave that task to corporations. And we can see what happens in the work of Yılmaz Özdil: The Izmir municipality pays 37 kuruş for a liter of milk bought from villages, whereas AKP pays milk monopolies 53 kuruş.
Is milk distribution really a social project, or perhaps it's just a nice new business contract?
You can't dismiss this by saying "big deal, as long as our children our drinking milk", because there is the way to organize things in a different way and to have milk delivered to villages directly from the source.
4- If you were a country with social goals and/or political power, then you would think that you would want to make a special effort towards this type of project and to getting these kinds of results:
Milk distribution, in order to increase the welfare of small rural milk producers, should chiefly benefit small villages. It has not: when faced with the power of the market, small villages should come together, organize, and try to form a type of cooperative.
But this isn't possible in capitalism countries and for organizations like the AKP who both view any other sort of political power with enmity.
Dairy work and raising livestock is tough work, you have to give villagers credit. Around here a villager will sell a liter or milk to companies like Sütaş or Yörsan for between 55 to 75 kuruş. You may remember that Yörsan screwed over workers who tried to unionize. A liter of milk that Sütaş turns around and sells will fetch about 3 lira on the market. Why are we being made to eat such a big difference? Later a milk producing villager will pay 1-1.5 lira for a liter of water. Selling a liter of milk can only earn them enough to buy half a liter of water. This speaks to the power inequality between the unorganized villager and the monopolistic market. This is the political economy of milk.
5- We should also bring the following to light. The only way to minimize the cost of social projects like milk distribution is to eliminate intermediaries. And the best way to ensure the most efficient and healthy process of production is to increase the scale of production and distribution, that is to centralize the means of production. If you're going to try to organize the distribution of milk at the national scale, the best way to do it wouldn't be in cooperatives but in state farms.
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How did we get here from talking about milk? Even when talking about milk, you are also already talking about production, distribution, and healthy consumption.
For this reason we should look on AKP's social project with suspicion: If the market has a clear interest ( haven't they already said that they are disinvesting from the intermediaries) and AKP's religious regime consolidates its populist intentions then the milk won't be entering any schools.
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