At first glance, this story doesn't seem terribly interesting to a non-farmer or suburbanite.

New York dairy herds produced 1,113 million pounds of milk during May. Milk cows were unchanged but production per cow was down from the previous year resulting in a 1.4 percent decrease in milk production compared to May 2010.

The number of milk cows averaged 610,000 head, unchanged from May of the previous year.

Milk per cow averaged 1,825 pounds, down 25 pounds from the May 2010 rate.

Yet I tried to read the story very carefully, because I am concerned about the Upstate New York economy. Dairy farming is a critical component in our economy. But for some really strange reason, the New York State government has been encouraging New York State farmers to reduce milk production. In fact, milk production has dropped so low in NYS, that the very successful Chobani Yogurt manufacturing plant, based in New Berlin, NY, is going to seek expansion elsewhere, outside of NYS. New York State's dairy industry cannot produce enough milk for the expansion of ONE successful business in this state.

Now I am not an economist. Nor a farmer. But I've got some common sense and a pretty good sense of human nature.

WHY the heck would our own government be pressuring New York farmers to reduce milk production?! Especially when we're *supposedly* trying to build a better economy again here. It does not make sense.

Other things don't make sense, either, like politicians passing laws, for all intents and purposes, that destroy Upstate manufacturing businesses. Do we even HAVE any manufacturing in this state anymore? Even Remington Arms, the backbone gun and rifle scopes manufacturing plant, closed doors. And then there's the increase of prisons up here. Why do politicians want to send criminals from New York City to prisons in Central New York? And then these politicians have the gall to claim these criminals as NYC residents, to pump up their population (and representative) numbers! What the heck??

Just what do the NY politicians expect Upstate NY to do?

My suspicious mind wonders if these politicians just want Upstate to be a natural resource vault, so that New York City and other large metropolis areas can slurp our natural resources dry. One good example is NYRI. That group wants to use Upstate's natural resources to pump electricity to Downstate. It would confiscate our lands, ruin our economy, destroy our properties, and raise our taxes and energy bills, all so that NYC gets more power. The NYRI proposal was struck down, but we all know it'll be back. And now there's the hydrofracking problem-- energy companies wants to slurp natural gas from our properties, caring not if the process ruins our water supplies and our land and our health. Yikes!

Something screwy going on around here....