> to be extremely wasteful

It's actually less wasteful this way. Your American farmers are still dumping all their excess milk when they can't sell it, they just don't have any government intervention to protect them when it all goes tits up, so they either produce even more to try and make more money (which gets dumped), or they go bankrupt and get bought up and consolidated by billionaires.

>Farmers with perishable products such as milk were at the mercy of processors who knew they could pressure farmers into accepting lower prices because the alternative was a spoiled product worth nothing. If individual farmers each tried to compensate for low prices by producing more, the result was a market glut which further depressed prices. Often the solution was to dump the excess milk, wasting it. Processors could threaten to refuse delivery and lower prices by encouraging competition among producers, allowing the price to be set by the most desperate farmer. Consumers were subject to price volatility, erratic supplies and seasonal shortages. Furthermore, it was difficult to ensure consistent quality when farmers could not rely on a fair return for their efforts and investment.