
Dairyland in Distress (2019) - nkurz
https://projects.jsonline.com/topics/dairy-crisis/dairyland-in-distress.html
======
digitalengineer
This a is a global trend: 'The quiet suicide epidemic plaguing French farmers'
(1) + ‘Europe loses 1,000 farms per day’. Meanwhile mega-corperations are
receiving millions of European subsidies.

(1) [https://www.france24.com/en/20181026-suicide-epidemic-
plagui...](https://www.france24.com/en/20181026-suicide-epidemic-plaguing-
french-farmers-loire-atlantique)

(2) [https://www.agriland.co.uk/farming-news/europe-
loses-1000-fa...](https://www.agriland.co.uk/farming-news/europe-
loses-1000-farms-per-day-new-agriculture-commissioner)

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Merrill
>There is no more quintessential image of Wisconsin than a red barn with a
herd of cows grazing in a green field against a blue sky.

This traditional farm cannot compete with modern operations of 30,000 cows or
more. It's too bad, because dairying fit in well on farms with land that was
not good for plowing and cropping. Marshy or sandy land was used for pasture
and hay meadows. Now you rarely see small herds of cows in pastures along the
highway. Marshes are either drained or left unused.

~~~
war1025
When people complain about flooding problems in the Midwest, I wonder if they
realize how much of our land has been tiled and drained for farming.

Wetlands act as a sponge to keep water where it fell and slow its movement to
the main arterial rivers.

Habitat destruction is honestly something that concerns me much more than
carbon emissions.

~~~
CalRobert
Too few people recognize grazing land as destroyed. Very often it used to be
bog, forest, grassland supporting many wild species (before the soil was
pumped full of nitrates) etc. A big grassy field can be an ecological
wasteland.

~~~
chrisco255
Grazing is one of the healthiest things for soil and grassland as long as it's
not overgrazed.

~~~
CalRobert
True - the land around me has tons of fertilizer applied to maximize grass
production and is grazed or cut for hay and silage. It supports very few
wildflower species though. Take hay cuts for a few years and you can restore
it though.

[https://twitter.com/collbradan/status/1166416101997273089](https://twitter.com/collbradan/status/1166416101997273089)

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portmanteaufu
Off topic: the URL ("jsonline.com") is short for "Journal Sentinal Online",
not "JS Online" or "JSON line" as my brain insisted on parsing it.

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gshdg
Maybe this results in replacing much of our dairy consumption with more
environmentally sustainable plant-based alternatives?

(Not almond milk, which is worse, but oat, hemp, and pea based milks and
yogurts are much less taxing on the environment.)

~~~
mywittyname
Most immediately this is the result of the trade war with China. The
government has been pumping tens of billions into the agg industry. But most
of this money is funneled to the big players to keep them from complaining too
much, and it does nothing for the supply-side. So the small/mid tier producers
have been hit especially hard.

It could be that long term trends were headed this direction anyway, but the
trade war has been devastating to the industry.

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
How would the trade war with the Chinese bring this about? Asians are
generally lactose intolerant.

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CydeWeys
Wow, this is amazingly comprehensive and in-depth reporting. Wish we had more
of this, especially on topics I was close enough to that it made sense to read
the whole thing.

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t0ddbonzalez
1\. Develop a "value-added" dairy brand 2\. Wait for Coca-Cola to buy your
business 3\. ??? 4\. Profit!

[https://www.fooddive.com/news/coca-cola-acquires-full-
owners...](https://www.fooddive.com/news/coca-cola-acquires-full-ownership-of-
dairy-brand-fairlife/569873/)

~~~
gogopuppygogo
Brown, sticky, sugary, water is not a good product for a health conscious
future. A future where people learn from an early age the perils of too much
sugar. A future where governments limit the sale of such goods.

Coca Cola needs to diversify.

Then again, dairy seems like an awfully bad segment to get into given the
issues it faces.

Who am I to judge the brass over there though? I'm sure they paid some
consultants eight figures to tell them that this was a good idea.

~~~
CharlesW
> _Coca Cola needs to diversify._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca-
Cola_brands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca-Cola_brands)

~~~
mywittyname
I was about to say, Coca Cola is the epitome of a well diversified, but
focused company.

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NPMaxwell
This looks like consolidation of small (family owned) farms into larger
(corporate, maybe multinational) operations.

------
nimbius
im not convinced this is an entirely bad thing as it seems the US has had a
glut of dairy for quite a while. Here in the United States, we put cheese on
everything and its slowly killing us. We largely started this trend when the
USDA began eschewing whole milk in favour of skim. As a result, dairy farms
simply redirected their waste fats to the production of cheese and cheese-like
products instead of limiting their production as a whole. Efforts to tackle
childhood obesity have zeroed in on things like sugary chocolate milk and
unhealthy dairy products (aerosolized cheese and processed cheeses in general)
to quantifiable success.

I also question whether the newspaper for the largest dairy producing state in
the US is capable of covering the issue without bias. "fake milk" and "fancy
water" are a few key phrases that concern me. The coverage also seems to try
to have its cake and eat it too...highlighting the urgent need for Latino
workers (a critical requirement almost exclusive to industrial farming) while
bemoaning the struggles of small farms as "the industry" which is actually in
turmoil.

Disclosure: I am a vegetarian, and derive a nontrivial amount of calories from
dairy.

~~~
at_a_remove
A couple of years back I had a rather abrupt dietary change due to some health
issues. One of the key parts was the total elimination of cheese from my diet.
I began to say to myself, "Props to those National Dairy Council guys,"
because cheese was everywhere I looked. It is kind of impressive, really.

I am not against labels like "fake milk." If anything, I find myself
increasingly annoyed by products that are not what they actually claim to be:
silk that is not _really_ silk, milk that is not _actually_ milk. I'm quite
okay with linguistic prescriptivism when it comes to product names.

~~~
freddie_mercury
> I am not against labels like "fake milk."

I agree, anything other than full fat human milk that is non-homogenized and
unpasteurized, with no additives (vitamins or otherwise) should be labelled
fake milk.

~~~
war1025
Me and my wife were actually joking the other day that at some point there's
going to be a human milk industry. We envisioned something similar to the
places you can go to sell your blood plasma.

There already is a network of sorts where lactating moms will donate milk to
hospitals and mothers that can't nurse for whatever reason. [1]

[1] [https://uichildrens.org/mothers-milk-bank-
iowa](https://uichildrens.org/mothers-milk-bank-iowa)

~~~
akubera
There was that human-milk ice cream in the UK around 2011:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Gaga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Gaga)

I don't know how well that turned out.

------
puttycat
While comprehensive, this reporting is very shortsighted -- I don't see how
one can ignore the horrifying image of hundreds of cows locked in mechanical
milk-extraction machines, while only reporting on the very narrow Wisconsin
industry. Clearly health, animal-rights and environmental awakening is also a
factor pushing more consumers to prefer plant-based milk (soy, almond, etc.)
which influence the cow-based industry.

~~~
jetrink
That's not an accurate image of dairy farms, at least based on the large farm
I visited. Cow productivity is strongly influenced by the quality of life of
the cow. Stressed, stick or otherwise unhappy cows produce less milk and as a
consequence, farmers put a lot of effort into keeping them healthy and happy.
The particular farm I visited used milking robots produced in the Netherlands.
Cows spent their days outdoors and would visit the milking robot on their own
when they decided to. The robot would also clean the cow, give it a snack and
record some some basic health data.

The only thing that seemed inhumane to me was how calves would be separated
from their mothers so early. Just a few weeks (days?) after being born, they
were shipped off to a separate location a thousand miles away.

~~~
puttycat
95%-99% of farm animals in the US are born, raised, and die in factory farms
[1], i.e. they are born into constant unimaginable suffering and die a
gruesome death. These stats are about the same throughout the Western world.

Cows and other farm animals who are raised in relatively "humane" captivity,
like the one you're describing, are an anecdote.

[1] [https://sentientmedia.org/u-s-farmed-animals-live-on-
factory...](https://sentientmedia.org/u-s-farmed-animals-live-on-factory-
farms/)

~~~
RHSeeger
While it's entirely possible that's a reasonable article, my first impression
is to ignore it

\- "amimal rights think tank Sentience Institute"

\- popup that asks "do you love animals"

\- image a a crying cow

It reeks of an extremely biased article to me. I mean, that doesn't mean it is
such, but my "links from shitty news on facebook" meter certainly labels it
that way.

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nikofeyn
kind of a bad title given the fact that dairyland is not a word but is the
name of a major insurance company. “dairy land” would have been better.

~~~
tengbretson
Wisconsin considers it a word.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Wisconsin#/media/File:2007_Wisconsin_License_Plate.jpg)

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nihilismislove
Well, animal agriculture has no future and the sooner farmers realize that,
the better for us all

~~~
jacurtis
I wouldn't go as far as saying it has "NO future". I think we are seeing a
correction right now. From an over-reliance on animal agriculture and
hopefully start transitioning to a more balanced relationship with animal
agriculture.

~~~
nihilismislove
Maybe. Still doesn't seem like the best investment :)

