Is that really true? I guess I've always seen the meme that our (in the US, that is) food is artificially cheap, because of subsidies for farmers and ag companies.
Or does your "artificial scarcity" phrase really just mean "regulations keeping me from selling water with white food coloring in it and calling it milk?"
I didn't downvote, but I assume it's because you're making a strong counterfactual* assertion without any support or reasoning, and reasoning in counterfactuals requires strong assumptions about causality. These causal assumptions are highly contentious, rarely agreed upon, and almost never supported except by the barest loincloth of evidence, as evidenced by your cato.org link.
It was such an out there statement that it seemed like trolling to me, which is why I didn't even bother to downvote, and assumed that others would take care of it.
* Counterfactual in the sense is that it is about a world that does not currently exist.
Its rude to downvote without explaining why, if it requires domain specific knowledge. I can't speak for the downvoters but I do know from my gentleman farmer relative (I guess they call them hobby farmers now...) that's a very old article and a couple years after that one of the omnibus farm bills completely eliminated the milk price support. So your justification is a .gov program that no longer exists as of roughly the 9/11 attack era.
Everything about .gov manipulation of farmers is controversial. Milk's been a free-er market than most for about 15 years now. Corn for example is still corrupt as all heck leading to everything from obesity to anti-biotic resistances. But milk is currently a free-er market than most.
Or does your "artificial scarcity" phrase really just mean "regulations keeping me from selling water with white food coloring in it and calling it milk?"