
Rotterdam's floating dairy farm project - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jul/04/do-cows-get-seasick-rotterdam-floating-dairy-farm-netherlands
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monk_e_boy
A bit off topic: I watched a TV show, it was a competition for the best young
chef. At one point they took the chefs out into the country side to cook
somewhere, on the drive they got caught up in some sheep that were out in the
road. All the chefs in the car looked around in amazement, one said, "This is
where our meat comes from?"... I was just amazed. They had no idea how big a
sheep is, or that it is a real live animal with feelings and a desire for
food, shelter, comfort etc.

There is also a local farmers show where they let you come and see the cows. I
love standing there and seeing the amazement in peoples eyes as they realise
that cows are huge, smelly and hot. People touch them, they are fury and warm
and nice. Yes, we kill them and eat them. There is a massive disconnect here.
Urban farms are a really good idea.

Oh and third boring story. We had a friend over and we sat outside. We could
hear the cows moo-ing. She didn't know what the noise was and was amazed when
we told her. They moo because the farmer has sold the calves. It takes them
days to mourn the loss. Drink up your milk.

[edit] I drink milk and eat meat. Not much, but I still enjoy both. I think
the fact that as a society we 'hide' this from most people is wrong. Let
people know about where their food comes from and let them choose.

~~~
brc
I agree that people should be more connected to their food supply, even if for
no other reason than to be able to select better produce for themselves.

I was witness to a cattle being slaughtered while staying on a beef property.
It is confronting, I'll give you that. However I still enjoy eating meat but I
strive to always eat locally produced and I try and eat what is in season.
Again this is more of a quality preference than a moral stand. I worked in a
butcher for a while and that taught me a lot.

I am lucky to live in an area abundant in food, so I do feel for those trapped
in a big city at the end of industrial supply chains. For dinner tonight I had
freshly caught fish that were swimming around yesterday. The difference is
amazing.

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legulere
This is another step in the wrong direction. Animals are very resource
intensive and give almost no resources in return.

The only way animals were kept in the past was by using resources humans
couldn't use themselves. Cows and sheep grazing on marginal land that can't be
used as farmland. Pigs fed on food scrap and in pannage.

~~~
ptaipale
> _This is another step in the wrong direction. Animals are very resource
> intensive and give almost no resources in return._

That is a most obscure statement. Where I live, northern Europe, people
couldn't survive without animals, until historically recent inventions of
transport. Not just cows and sheep grazing marginal land (though that is not
insignificant, because all land is "marginal" here) but also because animals
have provided much of the essentials materials for life: skins, wool, even the
bones were used for material. That is now largely replaced by using mineral
oil resources, which will not last indefinitely.

And if you are promoting "organic and sustainable" agriculture, remember that
to do it, you will need to _increase_ the amount of animals in agriculture -
otherwise you cannot get the fertilization and nutrition needed by plants.

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Aelinsaar
Well, the degree to which costs would have to be scaled down can't be
understated; 2.5 million euros for 40 cows. Yikes.

~~~
randomdata
Here I was thinking that it wasn't ridiculously out of line like some of these
urban farming projects. Looking at the farms for sale in my area, there's a
traditional land-based dairy farm in a rural area – with 50kg of quota
(approximately 50 cows) – listed at $4M Canadian dollars, or just shy of €2.8M
at the current exchange rate.

~~~
krrrh
Thise numbers say a lot more about the need to reform Canada's supply
management system for dairy production which is basically analogous to taxi
medallions for dairy cows. It's why cheese and milk are roughly twice as
expensive as in the US.

~~~
lostlogin
The US isn't much better. The subsidies farmers get block more efficiently
farmed dairy here in New Zealand and are a source of some frustration to NZ
farmers.

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dogma1138
Why? Anyone that been to the Netherlands would tell you they got enough cows
on Land.

Rotterdam is surrounded by farmland, what's the point of putting them on
water? If anything this would be an environmental disaster with bovine
excrements being flushed into the ocean...

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undersuit
Learning how to raise cattle on floating ocean platforms in a country with
2/3s of its land threatened by ocean flooding sounds like a solid plan.

~~~
dogma1138
Not really, raising cattle on the ocean is a very bad idea as far as the
environment goes.

And if 2/3rd's of your land will be flooded (which is has been the case since
well forever as most of those windmills are water pumps that pump water out of
the ground) you have bigger problems than finding your cows a new home
(Belgium works just fine also).

It's an expensive and more or less pointless exercise, heck based on the cost
of building artificial islands especially now since China became a world
leader in doing so if you really want to expand into the ocean that's a better
idea.

The excrement from cattle farms is a horrible source of pollution, it's one of
the main sources of pollution of water in the world, raising cattle on barges
means that you are going to pump metric tons of shit into your coastal waters
which would have very bad effects on the sea life.

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masklinn
I wonder how they're going to handle and get rid of manure, the render doesn't
show anything for that, and you don't want to dump raw manure in the water.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I'd expect it to be collected and sold? There's lots of demand for fertilizer.

~~~
lostlogin
In the volume cows make it, demand would be satisfied fast. New Zealand's
waterways aren't dead or dying while people want the run off. They are being
destroyed because of the volume dairy farms produce so badly exceeds that
which is easily used.

~~~
phillc73
I think this will probably be one of the biggest challenges for this project.
Bovine excrement and odour are very briefly mentioned in the article, but not
nearly in enough detail.

While the dairy machinery itself is usually well cleaned after every milking,
and the milk itself will be tested for bacteria counts, the areas surrounding
a dairy are almost always very, very difficult to keep clean. Even with
regularly cleaned dairy machinery, the heady aroma mix of sloppy faeces, urine
and dried milk will be pervasive.

I'm personally not bothered by it, having worked on a dairy for several
seasons, but I can imagine that not everyone will be quite as comfortable in
that environment.

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mc32
"My husband ... visited New York, there was Hurricane Sandy and he saw the
shelves were empty; there was only food for two days. He thought we had to do
things in another way, and the idea came: why not build a floating farm?”

Would floating farms fare well in hurricanes? Vertical farms, on the other
hand, could supplement some of the food for places which are too far from
farmland (although upstate New York is not all that far) or places
inhospitable to farming.

~~~
astrodust
If they're anything like the casino barges in the Katrina wake, the answer is
"No":
[http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4024377.html](http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4024377.html)

That's not to say they can't be designed to withstand hurricanes. You need a
very, very sturdy pier to anchor them in place, but it's not impossible to
imagine such a thing.

The good news is Rotterdam doesn't get a lot of hurricanes, and nor does San
Francisco or Seattle.

~~~
13of40
Of all the things we could add to try and revitalize Seattle's waterfront, I'm
not sure the pervasive smell of cow poop is the answer. We've got places like
Duvall and Enumclaw for that.

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hexscrews
It'll be interesting to see what happens when the technology to generate milk
from artificial mammary glands becomes a thing. We are already on the path to
eliminating the need for bovine meat processing.

~~~
stephenr
> We are already on the path to eliminating the need for bovine meat
> processing.

You might be. I'm not.

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timwaagh
wow 2.5 million. rotterdam is among the poorer cities in the netherlands. they
could have done a lot of other things with that money. like give a thousand
people a job for a year. or expand the subway or the docks (its main economic
engine).

~~~
icebraining
A hundred people, not a thousand.

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Bromskloss
Doesn't that take away from the enjoyable water?

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yuvadam
"Reconnect with food"? How about we stop enslaving and exploiting animals for
food? Or is that too radical of an idea?

