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

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

#311

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

handoflixue wrote: post #270
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pollution is a negative externality, I agree. Paying illegal immigrants to work in the U.S. is illegal, but it is not a negative externality. I'm also not convinced that small farms are better about either of these things than big ones are.

The article included reports shows that the larger farms are responsible for more pollution, because the sort of techniques you use to handle the waste for 1,000+ cows are radically different than the ones you'd use to handle a small business herd. Search for the phrase "manure lagoon"

The same amount of milk needs to be produced either way. I'm skeptical that ten farms with 100 cows each will cause less manure than one farm with 1000 cows. It all has to be dealt with one way or another.

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

#312

Post by dehrmann »

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…

> Food from the store has far less nutrition

Looking for a source, the best I found was

> Davis and his colleagues chalk up this declining nutritional content to the preponderance of agricultural practices designed to improve traits (size, growth rate, pest resistance) other than nutrition.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...

So choose your varieties wisely. That said, outside of poverty, malnutrition isn't really a problem in developed countries; overeating and obesity is the much bigger health concern.

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

#313

Post by cies »

duxup wrote: post #130
cies wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stinking animals, caged or fenced up, slaughter looming over their pitiful existence. Nope. No glamour there as far as i see.

Your distaste for it really doesn't have much to do with if it is or isn't idealized.

That also what I'm saying: I have a distaste for it, I cannot believe this is romanticized.

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

#314

Post by belorn »

jessaustin wrote: post #287
belorn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was in the local news a year or so back. If they go to any construction site, they will find so many cases that they won't have resources to do any other work related investigations for the rest of the year. As such they decided to stop doing it for the unforeseen future. From the politicians, they mostly want the companies to self regulate. Human trafficking for labor is costly to enforce and is not something whi…

Are you using "human trafficking" when you mean "hiring workers who lack documentation"? These are not the same thing, and I don't believe anyone who knows enough English to have encountered that term would make that mistake.

70% of all human trafficking is for forced and exploitative labor.

Lets take an example. 30 workers get transported over the border as seasonal workers to work at a farm. They live in small building without heating or running water, and barely have enough food. 3 months goes by and they have still not get paid, and when food stop arriving they decide to go to the police.

The owner of the farm claim innocence, as they simply hired contractors. There is even a ongoing legal case between the farm owner and this contractor because the work has been less than what was agreed and paid. The farm owner has been living in a different country for this whole period and never seen the workers, and the pickup for the produce was handled by a different contractor.

The police now have 30 unknown persons from multiple countries and without passports. The workers want to get their pay, and also food and shelter. They are do not want to get sent back home with nothing. The police will now have to do a lot of hard work, social service will have to address the humanitarian situation, and the criminals are very unlikely to be caught, fined and sentenced. It will cost a lot of money and resources for the government, with nothing that they can use political to show for it.

Under the laws I live on, this is human trafficking. There are an unlimited amount of variation this, but the key aspects are exploration under coercion, abduction, fraud, and deception. There are those that like to think the problem is just a few missing documents, but in practice there are victims being coerced and forced into doing dangerous work with little or no pay, and then treated with disinterest by the rest of society.

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

#315

Post by jbroson »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #239
jbroson wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in any of the "family" small scale dairy farms is a little more important than how hard the work is. And hard back-breaking work is not unique to farming. Plenty of restaurants or other small businesses basically run off owners and family giving dozens of hours of labor every week "for free"

> I'm pretty sure the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in any of the "family" small scale dairy farms is a little more important than how hard the work is. Why exactly is that important? I could not turn a profit running a family plastic casting business in the U.S. either. It's just not something that can be done competitively on a small scale. Seems like milk production isn't either. That's sad for people…

The article is about the "death of my family's farm". Not about whatever you think policy problems are.

If you read the article, the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in a small family farm is more important than how hard the work is.

I'm really not sure at all why you want to turn this into a political argument.

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

#316

Post by jbroson »

nineplay wrote: post #230
jbroson wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in any of the "family" small scale dairy farms is a little more important than how hard the work is. And hard back-breaking work is not unique to farming. Plenty of restaurants or other small businesses basically run off owners and family giving dozens of hours of labor every week "for free"

The author didn't want to work on the farm regardless of profit. 2 out of 3 of his brother didn't want to work on the farm regardless of profit. My friend would never go back to a farming life, nor would any of her siblings or cousins. It's just too much work in a world where there are a lot of fun things to do with your spare time. My friend mentors 4H students, but she also takes off on scuba-diving trips several t…

The proximate cause of the failing farm was that it's impossible to turn a profit!

They had a family member willing to do the hard work! "hard work" had absolutely nothing to do with this particular farm failing.

This isn't rocket science guys, I don't know why people insist on conjuring up phantoms to argue with.

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

#317

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

jbroson wrote: post #315
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in any of the "family" small scale dairy farms is a little more important than how hard the work is. Why exactly is that important? I could not turn a profit running a family plastic casting business in the U.S. either. It's just not something that can be done competitively on a small scale. Seems like milk production isn't either. That's sad for people…

The article is about the "death of my family's farm". Not about whatever you think policy problems are. If you read the article, the fact that it's impossible to turn a profit in a small family farm is more important than how hard the work is. I'm really not sure at all why you want to turn this into a political argument.

I don't want to turn it into a political argument. It was my understanding that we were already having a political discussion, which I entered into.

For one thing, the article itself is overtly political -- which is fine and expected, because farming is politically fraught in much of the world.

For another, when you said "important" in your parent post, I had understood you to mean "important" in the sense of being generically important, like to society. I did not understand that you were referring solely to the importance of the issue from the perspective of the author of the article.

If you were trying to avoid a political discussion, then sorry. My mistake. Feel free to ignore my response to you.

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

#319

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

kbhn wrote: post #262
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 evolution…

You've replied with this article to multiple comments as if it carries any weight. Why do you feel like we're bound to the same dietary behaviors as our ancestors?

I do not think we are bound to the same behaviours. I think we are bound to the same preferences.

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

#320

Post by imtringued »

gruez wrote: post #76
lettergram wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally the cost I just paid lol But yes, $500k is about the minimum. Plus ~40 acres. For grass fed beef you can raise probably 20 heads and buy supplementals. You might only make $5-10k up to maybe $30k (buying hay or leasing other land to grow feed) profit initially. BUT it’s not a ton of work, really only feeding the cattle every other day, doing injections on the cattle and cutting / bailing hay 2-3 time…

>Another important factor for me, was the protection from inflation. Food prices go up during inflation, so my farm is worth more. this is a moot point because literally any other thing you invest it (short of maybe government bonds) protect you from inflation.

How on earth can you not know why those things protect you from inflation? Precisely because they are productive investments that return money in the future and that future money is higher, precisely because of inflation.

The mechanism that protects a stock and a farm from inflation is exactly the same which is why it's not a moot point, it's the entire reason why we have inflation as a policy goal. You're supposed to go out there, work and expand your business, hire people and make the economy productive again!

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