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

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

#241

Post by ska » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #204

benjaminmaccini wrote: post #195

This was written in 2019. There is another thread, but this is my first time reading. So I understand; - Milk prices are going down due to a decrease in the cost of production + overproduction. - Farmland availability is decreasing because CAFOs are incentivized (required?) to buy more land. Property value is also decreasing for farmers near CAFOs. - Small farmers operate on decreasing margins. - Small farmers lack p…

> It's insane how little I know about food economics and scary how much of an impact it has on communities, especially impoverished ones. America mostly stopped caring about the welfare of rural Americans sometime around WWII. There have been some brief blips (Appalachia 68, farms 78) but generally - concern for Americans to sustain themselves ends at the edge of metro areas. Neither pols, nor press nor most of us ar…

> Neither pols, nor press nor most of us are interested in a meaningful way.

I'm not sure that's true - it's just that overall people are much more interested in cheap food. Agriculture has been pulled into a race for the bottom here for a while, and small farms & rural communities are a nearly unavoidable casualty.

The basic math here is easy, the moment labor becomes a significant contribution there is pressure to reduce it, which means either worse pay for the same work, or figuring out how to be more productive with less labor (automation, scaling) or a mixture of both.

Overall there is a lot of concern with being able to keep a food supply going, but that doesn't' translate to caring about e.g. family farms remaining viable.

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

#242

Post by dbrower » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

AshleighBasil wrote: post #197

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…

>reported farms using illegal labor. I'm from Mexico, but I've always suspected the reason the US Democratic Party supports immigration is precisely because a lot of big corporations want to drive down the price of labor. They piggyback on antiracist and antinationalist activism to advance the interests of big agriculture. If I was a big agro, I'd invest in both parties. The Republicans to remove regulation that help…

It's not Democrats, it's business owners needing that labor. The Republicans are equally bad in practice, it's their rhetoric that is tougher.

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

#243

Post by kyrieeschaton » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #89

duxup wrote: post #87

Farming as a business gets idealized in the US and there's often this concept of a good old days when family farming was profitable and stable. But historically speaking farming has always been a boom and bust industry. Even during the land rush days in the US the amount of space granted per farm was barely enough / not enough to scrape by, even at that time. Now everything is so heavily tied up with legislation to t…

> Farming as a business gets idealized And I understand that in case of plant growers. In case of livestock exploiters I dont see what's so "cool" about it.

Have you heard of "cowboys"?

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

#244

Post by mindslight » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

vram22 wrote: post #196

mindslight wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

>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) Your statements that I quoted above are almost…

Possible deeper solutions are to end the centralizing trickle up economics of ZIRP, or to stop time. But either one of these is less likely to happen than targeted anti-trust. I get the idea that the market simply sees regulation as damage and routes around it, but that defeatism is also a large part of our national psyche that lets ourselves be divided over surface issues while capital buys loopholes. We've been sold this unsustainable ratchet strangling humanity as some kind of inevitable progression, and at a certain point we've got to say enough is enough and push back within the paradigm rather than thinking we can escape it.

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

#245

Post by PicassoCTs » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

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…

Bread and games rarely make for good business-models. A lack of bread makes for food riots, so even the most dysfunctional states keep that resource over-flowing and artificially under price pressures.

In germany you are not even allowed by law, to convert surplus grain into energy by burning it. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getreideverbrennung#Deutschlan...

For fermenting it you need a expensive license. Nobody is even pretending that this is a free market and even the most hardcore Neo-libertarians do not call for it regarding food.

The price fluctuations visible are usually the pearl-diving. All market participants dive for the pearls, aka the lowest possible price and hold their breath. Those who cant keep up, float to the top and are devoured by those who are still alive. Every round there are fewer and fewer small participants. Rinse and repeat, until only a few monopolistic giants are able to establish a price cartel.

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

#246

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

shever wrote: post #83

efiecho wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Dairy and meat is part of a healthy diet. Not actually true. For centuries, the traditional Chinese diet did not include dairy and minimised meat consumption too. The oft-trotted-out trope of calcium in dairy is misleading ( http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-and-milk... ) and even relatively small amounts of meat and dairy increase the possibility of prostate cancer ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p…

>> The oft-trotted-out trope of calcium in dairy is misleading (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-and-milk...) and even relatively small amounts of meat and dairy increase the possibility of prostate cancer (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18398033)

From your link:

While calcium and dairy can lower the risk of osteoporosis and colon cancer, high intake can increase the risk of prostate cancer and possibly ovarian cancer.

It increases the probability of developing some diseases and lowers that of developing others.

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

#247

Post by omginternets » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #88

andrew_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a human who is concerned with the treatment of bull (male) calfs born on dairy farms and their treatment for the production of veal, I have absolutely no clue why being a vegan has any pertinence. Why is it such common practice to insufferably proclaim one's ethos as a vegan? In all seriousness, the conditions under which bull calfs for veal production is abhorrent, and I have great difficulty in balance sympathy…

> the conditions under which bull calfs for veal production is abhorrent To you! To me (also vegan) any animal in a cage is abhorrent. I want to be free and wild and I also want all others to be free and wild. Maybe some humans deserve to be caged for their behavior. Animals can never be guilty... > Next time you see that on the menu, take a moment to think about where it's coming from and how it's made. Exactly. Was…

Here's what I don't understand about this reasoning: many of the animals you're defending -- such as cows -- have been domesticated to the point of relying on humans for survival. For these, the choice is not "live in captivity, or live free", it's "live in captivity, or not at all".

My question is therefore: were you unaware of this, or do you prefer the disappearance of (e.g.) cows over their captivity?

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

#248

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:41 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…

Humans like eating meat because it is nutritious. It is not just a random preference and it is not something that anyone can just switch off, therefore it is not a matter of morality, as you are trying to portray it ("If you love meat and are willing to burn the planet down so you can keep eating it...").

It is possible our taste for (cooked) meat gave us an evolutionary advantage that made us who we are today:

However, accessing more calories was not the primary reason our ancestors decided to cook food. “Scientists often focus on what the eventual benefit is, rather than the immediate mechanism that allowed our ancestors to make the choice. We made the choice because of deliciousness. And then the eventual benefit was more calories and fewer pathogens.”

Human ancestors who preferred the taste of cooked meat over raw meat began to enjoy an evolutionary advantage over others. “In general, flavour rewards us for eating the things we’ve needed to eat in the past,” said Dunn.

In particular, people who evolved a preference for complex aromas are likely to have developed an evolutionary advantage, because the smell of cooked meat, for example, is much more complex than that of raw meat. “Meat goes from having tens of aromas to having hundreds of different aroma compounds,” said Dunn.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/07/how-early-hu...

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

#249

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #123

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.

> Someone's preference It's not a personal choice (preference) when it cause another being to suffer (caged, artificially inseminated (raped), babies taken away, fed horrible food, etc.) Thinking that it IS a personal choice, to me, puts one on borderline insanity: total disdain for other forms of sentient life. I hope the taste of that meat/dairy/eggs makes it all worth it for you. I cannot imagine taste bud pleasur…

>> I hope the taste of that meat/dairy/eggs makes it all worth it for you. I cannot imagine taste bud pleasure trumps ethics.

You are putting a morality spin on something that has a biological basis. Humans like the taste of meat because it is a very good source of necessary nutrients. It is possible that our preference for meat and dairy (in particular, fermented dairy, like cheese) has provided us with an evolutionary advantage that has made us who we are today:

Human ancestors who preferred the taste of cooked meat over raw meat began to enjoy an evolutionary advantage over others. _“In general, flavour rewards us for eating the things we’ve needed to eat in the past,_” said Dunn. (My underlining)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/07/how-early-hu...

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

#250

Post by F_J_H » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

SECProto wrote: post #78

urthor wrote: post #27

On one point the article has made. Canadians are really really unhappy with their milk system, they have some of the highest priced milk in the entire world and they despise it. "probably through a supply management program similar to what Canada has" is a nonstarter for cityfolk. It would mean $4 milk.

Canadian here, very happy with the milk quota system. Despite all the media hoopla, I don't actually know anyone who cares about it. And I live in a city.

Also a Canadian. Likely most people don't care about it because they don't really know about it, and the additional price that goes to subsidizing farmers is also not material for many people. Also, many who live near the border make a bi-monthly trek into the US (pre-covid) to buy milk, eggs, and gasoline.

re: >> "I don't actually know anyone who cares about it" see: https://imgur.com/gallery/BTOog