On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

Post by fogihujy » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

corty wrote: post #42

ilikerashers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you classify helping with chores around the house as child exploitation too? As on a farm, kids have chores. They're not working night and day.

Chores around a house are an educational tool and may be considered beneficial. On a farm, you get lots of additional "chores" on top. Where the "chores" are hard labour, often dangerous, at times early in the morning before school and in an amount where you do replace paid workers. A household does work without a child doing chores. A family farm won't be profitable without the free labour from the children. There i…

Post by ilikerashers » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

joerandom wrote: post #40

ilikerashers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you classify helping with chores around the house as child exploitation too? As on a farm, kids have chores. They're not working night and day.

Do you have ANY idea how chores on a farm look like? Hint: it's nothing like vacuming or taking dishes out from a dishwasher. It's lots of hard work. Dealing with excrements and dangerous animals (even a cow or pig is dangerous in confined spaces).

Post by jansan » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #43

jansan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have relatives who run an organic farm, which is rather large and industrialized for a farm that has the official German "bio" label. They make their own cheese as a side business, but it is only sold locally. This way they can charge a higher price and there are no middlemen, so it is profitable. But I doubt this would scale.

We were on holiday in France skiing for a week once and the hotel dinner included 4 different local cheeses each night - none were repeated of the course of a week. It wasn't exactly a smart hotel (2* I think) but the food was sublime.

Post by rtrdea » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

efiecho wrote: post #46

ainiriand wrote: post #13

As a vegan, I am concerned about the cruel treatment of farm animals. Losing family farms only aggravates the problem in this price race against the bigger actors in dairy production. While dairy is not strictly necessary for grown ups, I recognise that it will be present for some time so we should care about how it is produced. Dairy should be more expensive than it is now, similar to what happens to meat.

> While dairy is not strictly necessary for grown ups, I recognise that it will be present for some time so we should care about how it is produced. Dairy should be more expensive than it is now, similar to what happens to meat. Dairy and meat is part of a healthy diet. While not impossible to do without, health problems often develops with time. That's why most people (84%) who adopts a vegan diet at some point in t…

Post by lettergram » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

willismichael wrote: post #54

lettergram wrote: post #49

As someone who’s spent a lot of time in and around farms. I even bought a farm last week! This is an accurate depiction for the vast majority of farms. It’s an industry where you have a high over head cost (want to start raising cattle - $300k land, $50k equipment, $30k housing / barn, $20k fencing, $10k to start a herd - profit in 2-3 years). This scales well. Get some more land, you can keep the equipment running l…

I understand that you're probably estimating bare minimum costs, but getting started for half a million dollars is actually way more affordable than I imagined you would describe. That's comparable to what some people pay for a middle class suburban home near a lot of the mid-sized metropolitan areas around the United States.