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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)

#191

Post by ozborn »

esaym wrote: post #160
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 t…

"the entire world stopped using dairy and beef, the cow as we know it would quickly go extinct"

Lots of animals are not used for meat and dairy and are not extinct. Sure, numbers of cows would be massively reduced but that also frees up pasture. Pasture could be converted to habitat for wildlife and support a more diverse set of species.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't care if the number of cattle are reduced to a tiny fraction of the population they once were, if it means more biodiversity.

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

#192

Post by nradov »

ip26 wrote: post #163
derriz wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree nostalgia can cloud judgement but there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of farming in the last few decades. Btw, this is a perspective from Europe - the same thing has happened with family farming here. While I didn't grow up on one, I spent a lot of time on my grandparent's farm. Farming has never been easy but the amount of capital required (represented by land, livestock and machinery) to run an…

This seems fairly inextricably tied to a heavy reliance on cereal crops & soy. If fruits & vegetables were a higher portion of our collective diet, more small farmers could be supported (produce being less mechanized) and while food spending would increase, our collective health might improve at the same time.

It's not really possible to produce enough calories for the population by focusing on fruits and vegetables. Only cereal and starch crops can do that. This has been true ever since humans stopped being hunter-gatherers and it won't change in our lifetimes.

Also even produce farming is increasingly automated. For example there are already working prototypes of strawberry picking robots; within 10 years those will be in widespread use on large farms.

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

#193

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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?

Anyone who enjoys their job should work for free? How are they meant to pay bills? What are you saying?

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

#194

Post by laszlokorte »

jasonv wrote: post #154

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…

I had to look that up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLjI_eixBQk

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

#195

Post by benjaminmaccini »

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 protection against rising overhead costs, this was historically done through co-ops, however these co-ops have grown to be massive conglomerates and fail to serve the underlying communities.

- CAFOs are the leading pollutants of water sources. They are also the leading consumers of ground water.

- There has been a dramatic decrease in the number of small farming operations.

Bad economic policies lead to public health and cultural crises. I can't help but draw some parallels to what has been happening in the Rust Belt (Hillbilly Elegy is a great read for this topic). It's insane how little I know about food economics and scary how much of an impact it has on communities, especially impoverished ones.

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

#196

Post by vram22 »

mindslight wrote: post #152
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 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 a perfect counter-argument to show why the suggestion in the last sentence of your comment will not work in practice. It will be shot down by vested interests finding loopholes after a few years, if not sooner. IMO a deeper solution is needed. And no, I cannot give one off the top of my head. Nor am I qualified to do so. But even laymen to an area can see potential flaws if they are obvious.

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

#197

Post by AshleighBasil »

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 helps big agro compete, and the Democrats to implement regulation that prevents small agro from competing.

Although tbh this is all I know of American politics from reading internet threads, haha

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

#198

Post by harshaw »

My Uncle started with a "family" farm in up state new york, maybe milking 80-100. Over the years as my Cousins took over, it turned into a commercial farm where they milk over 1000. The scale is pretty massive: from the barns that go on forever, to the giant pools of manure, the horizontal bunkers that store the sileage. They adapted I suppose - and because its a 3+ family farm with plenty of workers they can get time off from the grind. My Uncle, however, for years was the sole owner and worked his ass off 7 days a week. Its taken him a very long time in his retirement to be able to enjoy his time.

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

#199

Post by montoro »

speeder wrote: post #18
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.

Mind you, activist veganism is one of the biggest reasons family farms are being destroyed all over the world. Basically, low quality food is flooding the market, and getting purchased by the poorer population, that don't feel they have a choice in what they eat, because they eat whatever is necessary to fit in their budget. Meanwhile people that CAN afford to buy high quality food from family farms, don't, because o…

I suggest you look into the data behind soy production and usage: most of the soy that is produced in the world is fed to animals which people then eat (which is highly wasteful compared to directly eating the soy) and so if you care about the environment, eating soy products is much, much better than eating animal-based products.

https://ourworldindata.org/soy

Livestock farming is terrible for the environment and has a huge carbon footprint, partly due to the extreme amount of land it uses.

https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

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

#200

Post by jasonv »

laszlokorte wrote: post #194
jasonv wrote: post #154

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…

I had to look that up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLjI_eixBQk

Yeah, the screen looks the same, I think the Utah dairy had a newer model.

They also mentioned that there were only 3 dairy farms in the state with any kind of automated milking machines.

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