Wrong! Agriculture is a low profit business. If you're cruel to animals or take shortcuts you will go broke. I used to work with farmers as a fertilizer guy and I've seen it all the time.
First off most of these truly are family farms. It may not look that way but because of the high degree of automation available a single family with a couple of employees can farm thousands of acres or milk thousands of cows.
The outstanding farms care about their employees and their livestock. I knew one farm where every one of 1500 cows had a name. Not USX1102 but NancyJo or William. Every profession has outliers. Usually when you see a documentary it's that exceptionally bad farm.
I've been on hundreds of pig, cattle and dairy farms and you're seeing the exceptions in those documentaries. It's sad but it drives city dwellers to get entirely the wrong impression of today's farmers.
Wrong! Agriculture is a low profit business. If you're cruel to animals or take shortcuts you will go broke. I used to work with farmers as a fertilizer guy and I've seen it all the time.
First off most of these truly are family farms. It may not look that way but because of the high degree of automation available a single family with a couple of employees can farm thousands of acres or milk thousands of cows.
The outstanding farms care about their employees and their livestock. I knew one farm where every one of 1500 cows had a name. Not USX1102 but NancyJo or William. Every profession has outliers. Usually when you see a documentary it's that exceptionally bad farm.
I've been on hundreds of pig, cattle and dairy farms and you're seeing the exceptions in those documentaries. It's sad but it drives city dwellers to get entirely the wrong impression of today's farmers.