
On the death of my family's dairy farm - howard941
https://blog.abevoelker.com/2019-03-06/on-the-death-of-my-familys-dairy-farm/
======
GlenTheMachine
This is not just an environmental and animal welfare concern, although it
certainly is those things. But it's also a national security issue of the
first order.

One of the ways big factory farms work so efficiently is by utilizing mono-
cropping. They'll plant acre after acre after acre of exactly the same strain
of a crop. That gets their efficiency, and hence their profit margin, as high
as possible. You don't have to do anything differently in order to support two
strains of corn or soybeans. You con't have to worry about one breed of milk
cow being more susceptible to disease or giving milk with a different fat
content. All your equipment is the same, all of your chemical inputs are the
same, all of your processes are the same.

That works fine when it works. But when it doesn't work it can go completely
to hell. One pathogen could conceivably wipe out a large portion of America's
entire corn or soybean crop. Significant enough climate change could as well.
A single new strain of disease, if it were robust enough to spread through the
air or via wildlife, could kill huge fractions of our cattle or pigs. It's not
inconceivable that we could go from large surpluses of cheap food one year to
widespread hunger the next, with just the wrong set of circumstances.

We've not just improved farming efficient. We've gutted the natural robustness
of what used to be a distributed agricultural system.

~~~
projektfu
Dairy cattle are the poster children for a varied diet. They eat many kinds of
waste such as distillers' grains, peanut hulls, beet pulp. They don't care
where their corn silage comes from and they can even consume and detoxify
aflatoxin-laden corn that cannot be placed into any other food supply. I'm not
sure that larger dairy farms are going to have more of a monoculture attitude
toward their supply of feed.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
I'm not referring to mono cropping for animal feed. I'm referring to mono
cropping for human consumption. A large fraction of the calories in your diet
likely comes from corn, if you live in the US and get your food from the
grocery store.

There used to be hundreds, maybe thousands of varieties of corn grown
regularly in the US. There aren't any more. It's hard to tell how many corn
varieties that are grown commercially in relevant quantities, but it's
certainly less than fifty, and maybe less than twenty.

Less genetic diversity means less robustness to changing pathogens and
climate.

~~~
ip26
I generally agree with you but FWIW most of the corn (90%+) grown in the US
goes into animal feed, e.g. for cows.

Which is of course its own little tragedy, considering you get 1 calorie of
cow for every 12 calories of corn.

~~~
technotony
Maybe 1 calorie of cow per 12 of corn, but dairy cows are much more efficient
than that:

Cow eats 40.57 MCAl/day [1]

Produces 45.5 KGS of milk [1]

Milk 610 kcal/liter

Energy of cows milk per day 27.755 MCAL

Cow milk efficiency 68%

This feels high as a gut reaction, maybe calculation is missing energy to grow
the cow. Still it shows how efficient they are!

Would love a source for your cow meat efficiency numbers, I'm currently
exploring efficiency of fermentation methods to produce meat alternatives and
that would be a helpful data point.

Source: [1] [http://www.milkproduction.com/Library/Scientific-
articles/Nu...](http://www.milkproduction.com/Library/Scientific-
articles/Nutrition/Energy/)

~~~
Falling3
Don't underestimate the contribution of the "energy to grow the cow". Dairy
cows don't start producing until they're 2 years old and are typically only
kept around until age 5 or 6. That's a full third (or more) of their lives
with no output whatsoever.

------
marricks
As someone who hates large corporations (I think I spend most of my HN time
nowadays railing against big tech) and a vegan this hits me at a weird spot.
CAFO’s are horrible to the land and the poor cows trapped in them. Greater
volume equals greater profit and less concern on an individual…

Small dairy farms are better in a few ways, but cows still live there for a
fraction of their natural life spans, calves are taken from their mom’s while
way too young because we use their milk for our own consumption. Say all you
want about “they’re bred that way” but that all seems to be a guise for
getting what we want out of them. I’m sure small farmers care about their
cows, but I’m also sure their perspective is shaped by the need to make a
living from them.

Where this all comes to head now, with falling demand in milk and rising big
companies, is rough. We’ll have more mistreated cows and larger businesses
taking over. Society will change over time and should, we’re on the verge of
environmental apocalypse it seems and meat and dairy are a part of it[1],
finding a way to support those who need to change industries humanely is key.

[1]
[http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm](http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm)

~~~
jmull
I think it's probably fair to change this:

> but I’m also sure their perspective is warped by the need to make profit out
> of them.

to something like this:

> but I'm also sure their perspective is based on their need to subsist on
> them.

I think your heart is in the right place, but characterizing family dairy
farmers as "warped" and profiting is not going to end up connecting or being
helpful.

~~~
fnovd
At the end of the day, a cow to a dairy farmer is just a machine. Whatever
airs people may put on when describing how they treat their animals, the
reality is they would (and do) sell them off to the highest bidder once the
the juice stops being worth the squeeze.

We don't do this to other animals we claim to care for: an old dog that loses
his youthful energy is still given a spot in the home and, if the time comes,
will be put down in a more-or-less humane way. An old cow that loses her
ability to produce milk is sold to whoever can make use of what's left of her
body and promptly forgotten. If economic demands are the reason for this
practice, then we can confirm that the amount of profit one can derive from a
cow is the primary driver of interactions with her.

Words like "warp" and "profit" are a symbol of a fundamentally different way
of thinking about what a "reasonable" relationship with an animal should be.
However, I don't think you can accurately describe what the relationship
between a dairy farmer and a cow is without such language, as owning a dairy
farm _is_ a business and making a profit is _of course_ a primary concern. We
see companies large and small externalize costs in pursuit of profit. What's
so sacred about the dairy farmer that we have to tiptoe around describing the
nature of their business?

~~~
a1369209993
"Warped" falsely implies that their relationship with a nonsapient meat-
machine that exists for the purpose of turning grass and agricultural waste
into good-tasting food is in some way unreasonable.

What's so sacred about cows that we have to tiptoe around describing what
they're for?

~~~
fnovd
That's exactly what I said:

>Words like "warp" and "profit" are a symbol of a fundamentally different way
of thinking about what a "reasonable" relationship with an animal should be.

It's not a "false" implication as there is no true and objective measure of
"reasonable". I substituted "fundamentally different" because I think it's
more accurate than "false" or "wrong".

Cows aren't "for" meat or dairy any more than Africans were "for" enslavement.
It is a purpose bestowed upon them by an outside influence, for sure, but it
is not an intrinsic property of the being him or herself.

~~~
a1369209993
Edit: to clairify, I wasn't criticizing your post so much as criticizing the
original assertion and answering (one possible reason) why people would object
to it.

> It's not a "false" implication as there is no true and objective measure of
> "reasonable".

That's a reasonable [heh] position (though obviously not one I _agree_ with),
but that just changes the original assertion from false (there's a objective
measure and it contradicts this) to meaningless and misleading (there's no
objective measure by away from which their perspective can be said to be
warped).

> Cows aren't "for" meat or dairy any more than Africans were "for"
> enslavement.

Africans, like most humans, are[0] (physical substrates containing) people;
they're for doing whatever it is the person in question wants. Cows aren't[0];
they don't _have_ any inside influence to bestow purpose upon them.

0: In both cases qualified by "assuming there isn't a nigh-Cartesian
coincidence or conspirancy to falsify evidence of sapience or lack thereof",
which admittedly isn't a possibility I've put much effort into falsifying.

~~~
fnovd
>Africans, like most humans, are[0] (physical substrates containing) people;
they're for doing whatever it is the person in question wants. Cows aren't[0];
they don't have any inside influence to bestow purpose upon them.

Putting aside the difference between sapience and sentience, are babies
people? Are the mentally disabled people? As evidenced by law, we provide
personhood even to beings that lack the mental capacity to bestow purpose upon
themselves.

Even when we venture outside the "homo sapiens" sphere, we have different sets
of laws governing what actions are acceptable when done to _animals_ and what
actions are acceptable when done to _livestock_. These distinctions are based
upon our relationships with these animals and are not properties of the animal
him or herself. Even within animals of the same species, the way in which we
intend to use the animals governs what laws apply to our treatment of them.
For example, in Alaska, dogs chosen for sled-pulling are no longer protected
by animal cruelty laws and are in some cases legally considered livestock. [1]
Are these dogs actually different than the ones living in our homes? Can we
reasonably assert that intrinsic properties of these beings are the driving
force behind the laws governing their treatment?

[1] [https://helpsleddogs.org/iditarod-dog-kennel-horrors-no-
anim...](https://helpsleddogs.org/iditarod-dog-kennel-horrors-no-animal-
protection-laws/)

------
jonawesomegreen
I think that it is interesting to consider this in relation to the
renegotiations of NAFTA where Canada's dairy supply management [1] was put in
the spotlight.

For those that don't know some details about Canada dairy supply management
[2]:

> _The model, which matches domestic demand with domestic supply through a
> quota system, is particularly well-suited to a commodity like milk, where 40
> percent is consumed locally. Supply management is designed to even out the
> peaks and valleys of producer income, and in this endeavour, it has been
> successful. It also allows farmers to plan for the longer term, which is
> particularly important when producing a commodity subject to the whims of
> the cow’s natural production._

Despite supply management going against free trade ideals most of the farmers
I know do like it. It lets them keep the lights on and maintain family farms
that have been running for generations, but on the other hand it costs
consumers both in their pocketbooks and variety of choice.

[1] [https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-supply-management-
ex...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-supply-management-
explainer-1.4708341)

[2]
[https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/cigi_paper_30...](https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/cigi_paper_30.pdf)

~~~
ip26
Everybody likes being part of the protected market. That's part of the
problem- "Well if you're going to protect dairy, and you want my support, how
about you protect my steel too?" (repeat, repeat, repeat)

~~~
gerbilly
I'm from Canada[1] and supply management protects more than just a market. It
protects the landscape too.

Factory farms pollute the surface and groundwater.

The big corporate players will fight hard protect their right to dump their
'externalities' (read manure) in the cheapest way possible.

Sadly, because uncontaminated land and water is not accounted for in the
'market', they will likely succeed.

[1] AND I grew up in a dairy farming area.

~~~
ucaetano
You don't need supply management to do that. Not only that, supply management
is a terrible way to do that.

~~~
dleslie
We look and learn from our neighbours to the South, and what outcomes we see
down there generates strong public support to maintain the system we have.

Frankly, as a consumer, American dairy, beef, poultry and produce make me
nervous.

~~~
ucaetano
> generates strong public support to maintain the system we have.

Oh, yeah, everyone loves a protectionist market, when they're part of it...

~~~
dleslie
I'm not a farmer; as a consumer in a managed market, wouldn't your platitudes
imply that I should desire a free market? As it is, the products I buy are
reasonably priced, high quality, and safe.

~~~
ucaetano
Even consumers frequently love the idea of a protected ("managed" market is a
misleading term for "we subsidize and protect certain incumbents"),
particularly when it is a national market (for nationalistic reasons) or when
it is associated with a romantic/emotional vision ("oh, the poor little honest
canadian farmers, working dawn to dusk and being protected from the evil
massive corporations").

This is particularly true when you're not price-sensitive (i.e. poor), which
by being on Hacker News, you most likely aren't.

So you don't mind paying more for that emotional feeling that you're
"protecting" those farmers, even if other people might be more sensitive to
the cost.

A government protecting farmers isn't any different than it protecting
monopolies, and is just as bad. The only difference is the emotional &
nostalgic impact on people.

~~~
dleslie
The difference, in this case, is objectively measurable: Canadian poultry,
beef, dairy and produce are generally safer than American.

Also, I'm Canadian. I'm not making an American tech salary, not by any stretch
of the imagination.

~~~
ucaetano
> The difference, in this case, is objectively measurable: Canadian poultry,
> beef, dairy and produce are generally safer than American.

I'd like to see sources for that, and even if that's true, it doesn't imply
that the market subsidies are the cause of that.

> Also, I'm Canadian. I'm not making an American tech salary, not by any
> stretch of the imagination.

You don't have to be making a tech salary to be less sensitive about the price
of beef.

~~~
ViktorV
I never quite understood this. I'm from eastern EU, I don't consider my
country "poor", but people who are on the bottom of the economic ladder do not
eat beef here ( cheap beef is ~4usd/lbs, chicken thighs are 1.5usd/lbs ).
Maybe it's just my ignorance, but for me this sounds equally ridiculous to
someone who expresses his concerns about how poor people could afford lobsters
if the price goes any higher. Pure meat is expensive, and it's a luxury, not a
necessity.

The prices of meats are roughly equal to the US and making 20k$/yr makes you
rich here, money won't be a limiting factor when it comes to food. Avg. salary
in Missisipi is 40k$/yr, and that's the lowest one.

Of course you can't eat out in the nicest places every day from that salary.
This is what constitutes being poor in the US ( not being able to do that )?
You can always cook at home, and it's very cheap, is the price of the food
really a big weight for people in the US ( let's say the bottom 40% )?

Maybe being poor is just being poor compared to others in your area, and it's
mostly a mental thing. I lived on 250usd/month and life was good. Went to the
farmers market, cooked my own food, I felt spoiled by the food choices I could
make. I can make amazing food from various intestines, the taste is amazing,
cheap as hell, and it's the best quality protein you can get your hands on for
example.

~~~
dleslie
Eating _at least one serving_ of beef, pork or poultry in two out of three
meals a day is considered normal in America.

There's good reason they have an obesity problem.

------
supermatt
It's tremendously sad. Large-scale high-intensity farming is raping the land,
causing untold pollution both locally and globally, and small sustainable
homesteads are falling by the wayside, while these large agro-factories
receive billions in subsidies to produce "food" at a loss.

It's disgusting.

~~~
jopsen
It's also using less farm land and keeping people fed.

It's not obvious that small homesteads would be a viable way to feed the
world, much less a sustainable way to do it.

I'm not claiming that industrial scale farming doesn't have environmental
issues. But growing more food on less land might be a good thing.

~~~
marricks
Yeah... larger operations are more efficient. It’s one thing I try to remind
people who think humane meat could be a thing. Our planet is already getting
destroyed by CAFOs imagine feeding people cows who each had an acre to
themselves?

(My solution is just stop eating animals, better for them, us, and our dying
planet)

~~~
projektfu
If you keep making more and more food, the population keeps growing, and more
and more land needs to be turned into farmland. Increases in efficiency only
produce more food. This is not fixed by diverting farmland from animal protein
to grains.

~~~
jopsen
> If you keep making more and more food, the population keeps growing,

[citation needed]

This isn't the historical trend.

~~~
projektfu
Have we reached an inflection point in population growth? Last I heard we
doubled the population in less than 50 years.

------
justin66
I do not have strong feelings about milk, other than not wanting to drink it
and using it only sparingly as an ingredient. However the mention of this
protest by dairy farmers was striking to me:

 _One of the bad times I can remember was in the mid-to-late 90s - I was in
elementary school - when milk prices were so low that some farmers were
dumping their milk down the drain in protest._

At some point in the past I read about EU farmers doing the same thing,
spraying large volumes of milk in protest. This seems pretty ineffective to me
as a means of swaying public opinion. If I were someone who actually buys
milk, I think my feelings towards the industry doing this would _not_ be to
wish them well.

~~~
Scoundreller
And usually the cause of those situations was a high fixed price, which killed
demand.

Meanwhile, the people paying the high prices wonder WTF is going on.

------
gcheong
On the negative externalities point, can someone please explain how there are
no negative externalities when you have 100 farms with 100 cows each vs 10
farms with 1000? The amount of waste generated is the same, presumably, and it
all has to go somewhere, but perhaps it's just spread out more so that
negative externalities aren't as apparent or is there a real difference as the
article only brings them up as a consequence of large operations.

~~~
ggm
Here's a fictitious but plausible example:

Small operators impose a larger set of small burdens in time into things like
waste stream, and transport. Large operators syphon their waste into the
stream in one go, rather than diluting the 1000 cattle across a month, it
presents as a wave of high nutrient content for processing. It overwhelms the
tertiary waste treatment plant, requiring re-scaling of holding tanks, more
oxygenation, more dilution into the river systems.

Unless regulated, a single entity functioning as a "more efficient" process is
very likely to impose scale breaking consequence on things. This would be true
to road transport (for cows, for milk) for energy (cold storage, pumping) and
it is very likely at a lower overall labour cost, so significantly higher
apparent efficiency and profit to the farm holding corporate entity, but at
community cost in terms of infrastructure/utility burden.

Even thermal: a single aggregated cow barn for 1000 animals will radiate more
heat have have a more aggressive effect on the microclimate than 10 100 cow
sheds over a larger area...

------
platistocrates
Thank you for sharing, it touches on a lot of topics that most programmers
dont hear about. It's the kind of article that doesn't gain much traction
around here. I enjoyed it.

------
rmason
When I graduated from Michigan State I went to work as an organizer for the
National Farmers Organization. The NFO was controversial, they worked to
organize farmers and led a nationwide dairy strike in 1967 where LBJ
threatened its leaders with imprisonment. I was a young optimist but the
bottom line is that basic human nature makes it impossible to make it work.
But I helped start a couple of Coop elevators and learned a lot about
business.

Farmers are faced with two choices:

1\. Get big and be a commodity farmer ruthlessly focused on efficiency

2\. Or a niche marketer preferably selling direct to the consumer.

I've seen guys successful with either method but it's absolute suicide to be a
small commodity farmer.

~~~
ggm
In Australia, a small number of farm cooperatives succeed but most died on the
vine. We lost our canning plants to overseas. We lost our cooperatives to
industry self regulated open markets. The supply chain (coles, woolworths)
pushed costs back on the supply side and bid farm against farm.

I think the death of the cooperative movement in farming was a long-con by the
industry. Somebody should have pushed back because Unity (the northern NSW
farming coop for dairy produce) is alive and well, when other farming coops
died and the farmers are now bereft of power in the supply chain.

------
ijpoijpoihpiuoh
(Apparently) unpopular opinion: literally everything in this article is good
for everyone except the farmers themselves. More production from fewer cows is
good for the environment, particularly the carbon intensity of milk
production. Lower prices are good for consumers. Even the author benefited by
not being roped into working on the family farm, instead using his skills more
productively in the software business.

~~~
gwbas1c
> More production from fewer cows is good for the environment

You obviously did not read the article.

The problem with factory farming this way is manure disposal.

The article describes the environmental impact of this kind of farming in
painstaking detail.

In summary, dense factory farms disposing of high volumes of manure pollutes
groundwater and spreads disease.

~~~
ijpoijpoihpiuoh
I did read the article. I just believe that it's better to sacrifice the local
environment than the global one. If I could double the carbon intensiveness of
milk production to completely eliminate its effects on the local environment,
I would not.

~~~
ricardobeat
That makes no sense. "Local" impact is global when it happens at scale.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
(Same respondent, different account.)

I don't understand what you're trying to communicate with this objection.
There is not sufficient demand for milk, at any price, that a typical person
will live in the local environment of a dairy farm. Thus, the local
environmental effects of dairy farms will never be global, even if they scale
to the natural demand ceiling.

------
tomohawk
The government already sets the price of milk, and has done so since FDR
(1930s).

[http://www.eatingwell.com/article/16029/who-decides-how-
much...](http://www.eatingwell.com/article/16029/who-decides-how-much-we-pay-
for-milk/)

Such nationalized policies unfortunately are prone to capture by big players,
so cronyism gets rewarded disproportionally over other concerns.

I can see the point in government getting involved to make sure that the food
supply is up to standard and that there is enough extra capacity in the system
to ride through the inevitable bad times (like the dust bowl).

However, given the dairy industry has been mostly shaped by government
programs and regulations since the 1930's, it seem unlikely that salvation for
small dairymen is going to come from that direction.

~~~
StreamBright
Just another example when unintended side effects of government regulation
create a larger problem than the one it was supposed to solve.

~~~
ggm
I think the problem is not the regulation. The problem is the decline in
bargaining power from the farm side, into aggressively un-regulated market
concentration. The farmer cooperative buying produce to on-sell was replaced
by direct sale to the supermarket and logistics costs pushed back on the
farmer. All in search of a 1c a litre difference.

Please don't blame regulation for what is unequal market forces.

~~~
tomohawk
The government mandates that the farmers sell through these middlement, at
prices that are set by the government (and gamed by the middlemen). This is a
government caused problem.

You're right that the government should instead be focused on boosting
competition and supressing cronyism, but its been, what, 85 years and they're
still pushing the same thing?

------
genericone
A different outlook, for anyone willing to watch hundreds of hours of youtube
videos on regenerative agriculture, a rising tide of decentralized farmers are
going back to chemical-free and healthy, thriving produce, far beyond the
organic label that corporations have usurped and rendered valueless. Look for
living web farms and advancing eco agriculture on youtube and get ready for a
world of information outside of software.

1\. Living Web Farms

2\. Advancing Eco Agriculture

~~~
hak8or
Why on earth would anyone want a chemical free farm? That just decreases yield
and increases risk, contributing to increased price.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Nope. Increasing yield leads to glut leading to low price. For the farmers.

Plus there is always the downside of chemical pollution of air, soil and
environment.

Farmers are at the very bottom of the supply chain. We don’t see any
appreciation in income even if food prices go up.

~~~
genericone
If you dig into those youtube channels, you'll find just how damaging the
chemical fertilizers have been for our soil biome, how damaging tilling is to
the microbiology, how herbicides leave farm soil bare and creating soil
compaction and flooding when the inevitable rain is unable to infiltrate the
soil fast enough.

------
jondubois
Commodification is about taking products of different quality and marketing
them as though they're actually the same. It creates an incentive to make
products of the lowest quality possible because lower quality means lower
production costs and more profit.

Then over time, consumers get used to increasingly low quality products and so
it becomes a race to the bottom for producers; who can make the lowest quality
product which only just meets the minimum required grade.

I just did a search for "commodity quality standards" on Google and came
across a document which explains how corn is graded in the US; the criteria
that they use includes things like "Heat damaged %" and "Broken corn and
foreign material %". The criteria for other commodities like grains were also
similar (focused on damage and presence of foreign material) - It doesn't
appear that the chemical/nutritional composition of the commodities are taken
into account when grading them. It's easy to see why this would drive the
wrong incentives when it comes to things like choice of fertilizer (natural vs
artificial) and using GMOs.

~~~
opportune
Commodification is even more than that. It involves turning things,
activities, ideas, etc. which were not evenly formerly traded into
commodifiable entities. So it also includes intellectual property, the
abundance of services we now formally pay for which used to be free or done
informally, etc.

------
jpollock
NZ dairy farms seem to be doing o.k.

I wonder how they compare (size/costs/distance to market) with US farms.

I do know that NZ signed the CPTPP, which made markets for milk more open.

[https://www.tpp.mfat.govt.nz/assets/docs/TPP_factsheet_Dairy...](https://www.tpp.mfat.govt.nz/assets/docs/TPP_factsheet_Dairy.pdf)

~~~
phire
Large NZ dairy farms are doing ok (I know of one farm with 5000 cows. They do
once-a-day milking, they start at 7am and milk until 3pm in 3 separate milking
sheds). There are no CAFOs in NZ. All farms put all of their cows out in the
fields.

But even without the CAFOs that this article is complaining about, smaller
"family run" farms are dying out. Dairy farms are getting larger and larger,
it's getting un-economical for the smaller farms to keep going and they are
being bought out.

From 2002 to 2016, the number of dairy farms in NZ decreased 23.5% Yet the
amount of land used increased by 22.6%.

The average herd size in 2016 was 414 cows.

It's just economies of scale. Bigger farms are more economical.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
NZ also abolished subsidies and the largest dairy is Fonterra that is a co-op.

------
microcolonel
> _I think the intent was to provide evidence of grassroots farmer support for
> Canadian-style controls on milk price and supply, which reduce volatility
> and the need for subsidies and have managed to maintain Canada’s family
> farms’ existence, which would give the American federal government ammo to
> institute similar policies._

That's a very interesting take on these policies. Here in Canada, we pay an
obscene amount of money for dairy, from considerably smaller disposable
incomes.

The understanding I've come to is that while the policies make it easier for
some subset of mediocre dairies to operate, they make it much harder for
productive dairies to expand business. The dairy propaganda here is quite
laughable as well: the usual refrain is that dairy prices are "inelastic"
(which is nonsense, people frequently choose not to consume dairy in Canada,
whether because of cost or health concerns).

------
bradford
A lot of American cultural institutions are being lost in our effort to
modernize and optimize production. This affects a lot of industries, not just
dairy. Sadly, like the author, I can't really think of a good solution.

The only proposal that comes to mind: If America values its cultural
institutions (I'm thinking specifically farmers, craftsmen, certain maritime
industries, and machinists, although there are certainly more) and wants to
preserve them, government entities need to provide some of the funding. This
is obviously distasteful to some and I'm not sure if the positives outweigh
the negatives. I'm also not sure what the extent of preservation societies are
in America today.

~~~
ucaetano
> Sadly, like the author, I can't really think of a good solution.

But that IS the solution. Preserving archaic inefficient institutions and
forcing society to pay for it solely due to nostalgia is a terrible idea.

But there are solutions: entertainment & agroturismo. Sure, it won't preserve
every single farm, or even 1 in 1000, but it will preserve some of then, just
as tourism helps maintain a lot of historical sites around the world.

~~~
Pfhreak
There are other approaches too, some farms are focusing on local communities
-- I recognize this isn't possible everywhere, but I bought a whole beef from
a farm just outside Seattle. Small farm, well cared for animals, grass fed
their whole lives.

It was more expensive than supermarket beef. It was less expensive than
supermarket organic beef. But it cut out a LOT of middlemen and perverse
incentives to race to the cheapest price/lb.

~~~
ucaetano
Yep, let consumers decide which farms should be kept or not, I'm all in favor
of that!

------
robrenaud
I am curious if the farmers considered or attempted to become cheese makers
themselves?

I would not be surprised to see an American artisanal cheese revolution in the
same way that American craft beer's growth has happened in the last 10 years.

The bigram American cheese sounds bad, but there are some fantastic artisinal
cheeses produced here.

I have started buying lots of great American farmstead cheese (herd + cheese
making are in the same place) while living in NYC, often at ~$30/pound, but
much of it comes from Vermont.

------
squirrelicus
I'm just not sure what the problem is. Outdated modes of production can't keep
up with the lower prices for a fungible material. What's new?

~~~
ggm
Price economics are really bad at modelling strategic. America (and Australia)
don't want lowest price food. They want secure food, produced from domestic
and international sources. If you want domestic food production you have to be
prepared to force it, because on price alone, the foreign sources will always
win. If its not mexico, its canada or vietnam.

China is buying New Zealand and Australian Dairy because of the systematic
rorting of their supply by industry using Urea to boost apparent protein
levels. Now tell me again, how you want a US milk industry to compete with
that?

Uh-oh.. here comes protectionist regulatory checks on product...

------
beloch
There are a couple mentions of Canada's dairy supply management system, which
the U.S. recently pushed hard for the elimination of in the recent NAFTA 2.0
talks. (Note: Concessions were made, but dairy supply management was not
eliminated.)

In Canada's system, farmers must buy production quota allotments from the
government in order to sell their products. The number of quota allotments
sold is calculated depending on demand in each province. Hence, supply does
not exceed demand and dairy prices in Canada are several times what they are
in the U.S.. We pay a _lot_ more for milk, cheese, etc. than people in the
U.S.. The import duties on U.S. dairy are over 300%, and American products are
still able to sell at _lower_ prices most of the time. This policy has not
been particularly popular with average Canadians, for obvious reasons.

Despite this, Canada has the same problems with many, smaller farms giving way
to fewer huge farms, but not to the same extent as the U.S.. Small dairy farms
are not wildly profitable, but they can survive.

Meanwhile, the U.S. system has led to such massive overproduction that U.S.
farms are flooding Mexico with subsidized dairy and are doing their best to do
the same in Canada. Canadians generally view U.S. dairy as being of suspect
quality due to laxer laws on the use of growth hormones such as rBST, but
shoppers will still frequently just buy whatever's cheapest.

U.S. dairy producers looking for endless market growth are running into a
brick-wall of domestic market saturation and resistance from foreign countries
who know lowering trade barriers could mean the annihilation of local
production and replacement of quality products with ones of questionable
quality. Big dairy in the U.S. is rapidly becoming an _international_ problem.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"supply does not exceed demand"

This is a misrepresentation of the microeconomics at play.

However much milk is produced, it will all get consumed, because there is a
massive demand for Milk, it would just be at very low prices, possibly below
the cost of production.

Supply management is better described as price fixing - the amount produced
will enable the product to yield a certain price at a certain demand, and
therefore be economically viable.

" shoppers will still frequently just buy whatever's cheapest." \- if they
_knew_ one product was superior to another, i.e. if the ostensibly efficient
market which relies upon information clearing actually worked ... then the
dynamics of the market would help solve these problems.

This can be communicated through brand awareness, labelling, all sorts of
things.

Yes, as you point out, it's an issue basically everywhere because food
production, like banking, telecoms, entertainment etc. - is a highly protected
industry.

------
igouy
"How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms"

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-
food-giants-swallow-the-family-farms-iowa)

------
forkLding
I think another key issue that encourages consolidation in the dairy and other
agricultural industries is the encroachment of automation, a lot of tractors
are self-driving and many equipment increasingly don't require human hands.
Mostly large corporations are the kind that can buy and invest in this
technology and also are the ones who can benefit the most from it, which
creates a loop where only large corporations start thriving and out-competing
any smaller companies.

The only direction I can see for smaller farms is to probably go the "organic"
or "natural farm" route, but even that would be hard to achieve because larger
corporations can probably just sub-contract and own smaller organic farms too.

Agricultural industries is going the way manufacturing did a while back.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Small acreage farm automation is what we need. That would turn the tide in
favour of local and cleaner food with shorter supply chains with farmers
making better margins.(for non commodity crops)

------
bluedino
Who drinks milk anymore? I love the taste but haven’t bought a gallon in as
long as I can remember.

If you drink milk, people look at you like some sort of weirdo. It may be a
midwestern thing but I grew up drinking a glass of milk (and a slice of bread
and butter) with every meal.

~~~
leesec
>Who drinks milk anymore?

Millions and millions of people

>If you drink milk, people look at you like some sort of weirdo.

Maybe where you live. Most places this is absurd.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
I’m told this is one of the chief sources of bemusement regarding Americans in
Japan. They think we look like overgrown toddlers

~~~
pdonis
At least a part of the difference is genetic: a much higher percentage of
Japanese than Americans are lactose intolerant.

------
fopen64
My father grew up in small farm, my grandparents had something like 8 cows and
made a living, it was not comfortable but they even bought properties in urban
area so the kids would have a place to build a house on.

Maternal grandparents felt the heat earlier, their crop was rice; a typical
property would yield 100 x 60kg bags, and that would feed a family for the
year, along with a couple pigs and chickens... the problem was my mother had 8
siblings, so no land to everybody, and glad they moved to the city, because
agriculture shot up in scale. Relatives who stayed behind had to buy a lot of
land, machinery, and they are well-off because they grow palm heart on the
side.

------
HillaryBriss
_...family farms struggle and pay dearly to hire and retain legal workers at a
high cost. Other farms, particularly the large ones, pay lower costs for
illegal labor and externalize the costs of depressed wages onto everyone
else..._

one view of the debate about whether an influx of low cost laborers depresses
wages. economists and various journalists often take the other side of the
debate, citing studies that low skill labor pay rates are minimally affected
by an increase in exogenous low skill labor. the debate rages on.

------
Causality1
USDA marketing orders created an inflated market and USDA checkoffs robbed
dairy farmers to fund pointless marketing campaigns. This is exactly what was
always going to happen when we decided to put a finger on the scale for thirty
years.

[http://reason.com/archives/2019/03/02/thanks-to-decades-
of-g...](http://reason.com/archives/2019/03/02/thanks-to-decades-of-
government-meddling/)

------
skybrian
Sarah Taber thread on family farms, cows, and economy of scale:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/99722151397...](https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/997221513978884096)

~~~
waffle_ss
Taber is a consultant to corporate California produce farms and has a lot of
unjustified hate towards dairy farms (in her own words she plays it up as some
sort of "turf war" between produce and livestock farms). Her demolishing "a
cute lil farmhouse with 1-2 cows or a microdairy with 8 cows" strawman and
doing a "corporate consolidation good" song and dance, not mentioning the
reality of that being 30K+ cow CAFOs and the _unavoidable_ destruction to the
land that entails, is just intellectually dishonest.

But hey if you enjoy her woke fairy tales (e.g. ackshually organic was made by
a racist nazi cabal), have at it. Just know you're living in a bubble outside
reality:
[https://twitter.com/_MatthewDillon/status/108419765521399398...](https://twitter.com/_MatthewDillon/status/1084197655213993986)

~~~
skybrian
Is there someone else you recommend for learning more about ag tech?

------
sigmaprimus
I live in Canada and while our supply management system for dairy seems to
support our farmers, it actually sets up a class system that is extremely
difficult for aspiring farmers to break into. Sure if your the son or daughter
of an existing farmer life is great for you but anyone else wanting to get
into the business too bad, you can grow the hay or grain at a loss that will
feed the lucky few dairy farmers cows. I bought a gallon of 2% milk yesterday
for $6, that is the average price up here. I used to live near the US Canadian
border and almost every one of my neighbors bought their milk and cheese in
the US on a weekly basis. I feel bad for the dairy farmers demise but a
socialist supply management scheme is not the solution, rather stacking
enterprises on those failing farms is a much better idea, check out Joel
Salatin on you tube for a viable solution.

------
dqpb
> _The cows need to be milked twice a day, every day, roughly around 4AM and
> 4PM._

Why do cows need to be milked at those times?

~~~
logfromblammo
I suspect it's because the farmer wants to finish the milking before
dinnertime, and it needs to happen at least twice a day. So 4 AM+4 PM works
out according to the farmer's schedule.

Automated milking machines are available on demand, and I am not aware of
there being a "cow rush hour" on those, with annoyed cows queueing to use it
at the same time, and telling each other to hurry up. They just step up as
they require and let the robot handle it.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Lely the Dutch milling robots turned 25 years old recently. The cows come to
the robots to be milked by themselves. A thing of beauty.

Of course..this requires capital..American dairy farmers ..largely due to
subsidies ..barely make ends meet. And rely on undocumented labour.

------
jamst174
Instead of having thousands of families eking out a modest but sustainable
life, you have a handful of corporate entities and their shareholders making
millions. Simple unfettered capitalism at work again (and I believe in the
power of capitalism, but not without some boundaries).

For perspective, my dad and uncle were forced to sell my grandfather's farm
and equipment when my grandfather got sick and he needed 24 hr care. My
grandfather had sold the cows years before, but I have lots of good memories
of visiting them and helping out during the summers.

------
briandear
Yet somehow I just paid $7 for a gallon of Clover “organic” 2% milk yesterday
at the Mountain View Safeway. That is insane expensive. Who exactly is getting
that money? It seems like $7 per gallon retail ought to be enough to keep some
small farmers in business. Organic milk costs almost double the price of jet
fuel. I feel like someone is getting screwed.

~~~
waffle_ss
Sadly, organic has been hijacked by the large industrial farms as well.[1]

> _Who exactly is getting that money?_

The USDA keeps track of those statistics.[2] As of 2017 about 30% of the cost
of a gallon of milk goes to farms. Unfortunately milk prices are so low that
only the very largest farms, that can squeeze efficiencies out of operating at
scale, can make that profitable.[3]

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-your-
org...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-your-organic-milk-
may-not-be-organic/2017/05/01/708ce5bc-ed76-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html)

[2]: [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-
fa...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-
consumer/)

[3]: [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/milk-cost-of-
producti...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/milk-cost-of-production-
estimates/)

