On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019) • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by Sytten » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

Even here in Canada with regulation we see the same consolidation happening. The quotas of production have become so expensive that it is not possible to start from scratch. In the case of my familly the cows were sold in 1989 because it was either growing the farm or selling.

Now we produce only corn & soybean and despiste our ~100 acres it is not enough to sustain one person without a side job. There is not much money to be made in agriculture for small farms, that's why I am a software engineer.

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

#152

Post by mindslight » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #73

unfortunately the cow seems out of the barn for reasons other than legislation being missing. Farmers have not adapted to changes in conditions and they had time to do so. The point of a union should not be to collute to raise prices. The point of a union should be to pool market power and resources to break monopolies in creameries, or pollution. Any farmer should have seen the writing on the wall to have 1 creamery…

You're completely ignoring market inefficiency, as if a distributed desire for something better can simply be summed into creating a viable competitor. The tech equivalent is proclaiming that if you really don't like Google/Apple/Facebook/etc control, go start your own. It completely ignores that doing so takes an extraordinary amount of effort over a long period of time, and any serious competitor is likely to end up bought out by the bigger business before it can affect the market.

I'm generally apprehensive any time someone says "there ought to be a law", but the article lays out a well-sourced case. The economy and big business are directly opposed, and having a distributed economy is much more important for us human beings. Perhaps price controls aren't the answer (and would actually further benefit the large farms that are killing the economy), but something needs to be done unless we want to end up with farming monocultures that will some day decide it's more profitable to not supply us food. The right answer is probably antitrust breakup, and a statutory limiting of mergers going forward.

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

#153

Post by xipho » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

nineplay wrote: post #150

xipho wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to equate hard work ethic with sustainability, this is false. You obviously have never experienced the joys of winters with nothing todo except read, learn, cook and play, because you worked insanely hard on the farm for 6-8 months of the growing season (being your own boss, but who cares about that).

At risk of stating the obvious, dairy cows do not have a growing season. Cows are a 365 days-a-year commitment.

My grandfather had a dairy barn, I'm aware of this. The community around it rebuilt it when it was burned, looked after it when he travelled across the country etc. Was it hard? Certainly. To suggest his (and his families) life was somehow less joyous than a 9-5 hacking l33t code all year is insanity.

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

#154

Post by jasonv » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

I visited a dairy in Utah a couple of summers ago. 130 cows, 3 employees.

It's a fully automated facility, using equipment from Germany. The cows enter a stall, the machine milks them, gives them a treat, they move on. Employees get a text if a cow hasn't milked itself in a while... usually a tap on their shoulder is enough to get them to walk over to the machine.

Even yet, the person giving the tour said they don't make enough money selling the milk to sustain the operation. They also make high-end cheeses on-prem, and that's what keeps them in the black.

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

#155

Post by newthrawywhodis » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #139

My uncle owned a large dairy farm before he died. He loved farming, loved his cows ("the girls"), and loved farming enough to farm until he died, even though it was hard physical labor that had already taken a large toll on his body. The running joke in the family was that he made more from real-estate speculation than he ever did from farming. His farm was next to a major interstate and in the suburban expansion pat…

This is one of the only real ways to make money as a small farmer, the others being agro-tourism (pick your own), hospitality (airbnb, events etc) or most difficultly direct to consumer farm sales.

>He died a millionaire, but lived in a ratty, falling down farmhouse and drove a 20+ year old car.

To some people this is a feature, not a bug. He also probably wasn't surrounded by 100 nosy neighbors.

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

#156

Post by nineplay » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

mitjak wrote: post #141

nineplay wrote: post #95

I think he's glossing over the obvious. A friend of mine was just reminiscing about growing up in her family's dairy farm. Every Saturday morning, every Sunday morning, every Christmas you get up to take care of the cows. Feel sick? You've got to get up and take care of the cows. Want to go on vacation? Can't, there's no one you can leave the cows with. It's a hard life - maybe a satisfying life in some ways but ther…

what a strange point. "the obvious" is not that there's concentration of power but that farming is hard? what about small farms where many people are happy to continue working because they find it fulfilling?

The "obvious" is that operating a family farm as a profitable business is hard. Harder than three of the four adult children in the article are willing to work.

That doesn't mean there aren't people who want to do it, that means that a lot of family farms are going out of business because there aren't enough people who want to do it, regardless of external pressures.

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

#157

Post by pullmn » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

YinglingLight wrote: post #149

pullmn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you compare farmers with actors, they seem to have similar problems with stability of employment, low pay, and hard working conditions. In both cases these are partly caused by unavoidable factors about the industry, partly caused by ruthless suppliers, customers, investors and so on, partly caused (let's be honest) by the fact that many people make a lifestyle choice to do those professions, and will put up…

You don't need Shakespeare to live

Well, you don't need steak either, but both things are considered extremely important to human life and our society.

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

#158

Post by buildbot » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

slfnflctd wrote: post #119

andrew_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is yet more the kind of nonsensical, insufferable drivel that turns people away from rationally thinking about their food. Someone's preference for how and what they eat contributes nothing to conversation, and exists only to project a belief of superiority and collect pats on the back from like-minded thinkers.

If a sentient AI with superhuman intelligence were observing us, they would be utterly puzzled at the amount of waste and destruction we perpetuate through the meat & dairy industries for no reason other than ephemeral perceived pleasure through our taste buds. If "someone's preference" - a completely subjective thing - is objectively less efficient and more harmful than doing something else, we can and do intervene…

Or it would be wondering why we don’t eat any piece of meat we possibly can in order to maximally extract nutrients from our surrounding environment.

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

#159

Post by aurizon » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

This is all exacerbated by the decline in birth rates. Milk marketing promotes milk as a nearly perfect food - and it is, but it is costly for the ~6% of nutritional content in milk, (skim and 2%BF being lower). I only use milk for tea and often a gallon sours before I finished - so I switched to superfiltered bagged 3 packs, as the sealed ones last a month in the fridge. So you have super cows making more and a populace drinking less - it does not augur well...

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

#160

Post by esaym » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

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.

>As a vegan, I am concerned about the cruel treatment of farm animals.

For a somewhat malicious counter point... if the entire world stopped using dairy and beef, the cow as we know it would quickly go extinct. They have no natural habitat, they can't take care of themselves, and they make really lousy pets.

It is a somewhat similar story with elephants. They make lousy pets as well and selling ivory is illegal. So the best they get is being shoved into smaller and smaller chunks of dedicated public land.