“Adapt or die; resist and perish… Agriculture is now big business”

March 13, 2021 12:40 PM

On the death of my family's dairy farm "I do think it may have been possible to save the family dairy farm at some point, probably through a supply management program similar to what Canada has. There are all sorts of arguments to be made for or against such a system but by all accounts Canadian farmers and consumers are generally happy with their setup up there. [...] But at this point for America, the cow is out of the barn so to speak and it’s too late for our family dairy farmers."
posted by bitmage (18 comments total)

Canadian consumers are resigned, not happy.
posted by jeather at 1:11 PM on March 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

Canadian consumers are resigned, not happy.

The exceptions are the ones who have tasted American dairy products in the USA. The quality difference is... let's just leave it at "obvious," at least for mass-market milk and cheese. (You can still find plenty of good smaller producers who make really good stuff, but...)
posted by mightygodking at 2:35 PM on March 13, 2021 [11 favorites]

There's a lot to unpack here, and I'm not really up to the task. I've been in the dairy industry for almost 20 years, and probably the best thing that farmers could do is unify in advocating for some sort of supply management program. One of the challenges is that many farmers vote for politicians who are not in favor of anything but "free market" solutions to problems, and those guys sure aren't going to help you. In fact, they seem to be 100% behind "get big or get out" philosophies. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) sure hasn't done anything of note to help all the small farmers who are his constituents, and neither did his party during their recent run in the majority. But the processors are already operating their own de facto quota programs, so supply management is probably too little too late. Under the creamery programs, you get paid for a certain amount of milk. Any milk you ship over that limit is almost worthless. Maybe we need more creameries that are owned by cooperatives, I don't know. Even with the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Trump administration shoveled into farmers' pockets there doesn't seem to be a way to save small farms. But it's such a complicated issue. Large farms are generally more efficient than small farms, but they don't sustain communities the way small farms do. Many small farms only "work" economically when one or more family members have jobs in town. Many small farmers can't raise the capital needed to modernize or expand. From the milk plant's point of view, it's logistically easier to deal with large farms. With the COVID recession, fewer people are able to pay a premium for farmstead products. I wish I had answers, but I don't.
posted by wintermind at 4:10 PM on March 13, 2021 [25 favorites]

mightygodking: I'm glad to hear that is not just me being elitist! Milk when I visit Seattle tastes weirdly thin and flavourless! I was wondering if there was something going on.
posted by Canageek at 4:12 PM on March 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Conversely when I had a guest come north across the border to Niagara Falls for a quick dinner in a chain restauraunt, they remarked even on the quality of the butter pat served with the dinner roll.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:34 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

Furthermore: speaking as someone who married into a family of dairy farmers and then bothered to learn something about the Canadian dairy system so I could participate in conversations? Supply management isn't terrible, but it isn't exactly ideal either. Canada regularly has small shortages of butter and cream as a result of the big dairy co-ops misjudging market demand for the forthcoming quarter, and although supply management has definitely greatly slowed down the trend of big agricultural accumulation in dairy, any glance at herd size statistics and number of dairy farms over time will show you that that is still happening, just at a slower pace.

France unionized its dairy farmers, and their average herd size is much smaller and their quality is ridiculous. I suspect that's probably the way to go, but Canada isn't going to go that way any time soon; dairy farmers view supply management on par with the Ten Commandments.
posted by mightygodking at 4:48 PM on March 13, 2021 [10 favorites]

I don't want the Canadian dairy market to look.like the American one, but that doesn't mean I think it is a good system. I understand the bar in Canada is always "are we marginally better than the US? If so, good enough" but sometimes I like to dream bigger.

(I lived in the US for two years.)
posted by jeather at 5:12 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

Metafilter once again treads into the deep waters of Canada's dairy supply management system.

It's funny... earlier today I was reading something about how modern capitalism is currently propped up and made viable by the Chinese Communist Party. From an article linked in the FPP article, it sounds like the Soviets propped up and made viable the free market reforms in agriculture of the Nixon '70s. Capitalism: Dependent on Communism since 1972.
posted by clawsoon at 5:26 PM on March 13, 2021 [3 favorites]

Capitalism: Dependent on Communism since 1972.

It actually sounds quite the other way around, communism far more dependent on capitalism. Though still a far cry from a free market, so much of the resulting transactions and agricultural management manipulated by political entities for whatever reasons they favored at the time, and gamed by the most powerful players to their advantage.
posted by 2N2222 at 6:50 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

As long as we choose to privatize the profits and socialize the costs of CAFOs, dairies will continue to grow.

There are a few small farmers that are moving back to the rotational grazing of 100 years ago, but taking advange of things like easily portable electric fencing and other tools and knowledge to do it in a more sustainable way. Inputs are lower, labor is lower, and its actually profitable! I thought this article in about one farmer that has taken this approach was really good. There is a good bit of interest in moving back to grassland-based farming. Grassland 2.0, linked in the previous article is doing a lot of very interesting work.
posted by rockindata at 5:34 AM on March 14, 2021 [6 favorites]

I grew up in Ohio, and while nobody in my family is dairy farmers, we were always kind of dairy farming adjacent. My dad helped out on their neighbor's dairy farm a lot when he was a kid, so every visit to the grandparents, conversation would turn to how Lee and the farm are doing. It was never good. I'm pretty sure he quit dairy a while back. When I was in high school, we moved into a house where our next door neighbors had a small dairy farm, I'd say not more than 30 head. They had been struggling with low milk prices, and then one winter in the early 2000s they had a big fire in their barn. That was the last straw, they sold the herd. Now they do beef cattle and maybe some other things, but not dairy.

One of the big local attractions down there is a dairy farm. Many decades ago they starting making and selling ice cream with kind of an attached petting zoo, then they added a restaurant, then they added mini-golf, then a driving range and batting cages, and who knows what else. The place has expanded beyond all recognition, but they have not expanded the actual farm part. Now they buy the milk that goes into the ice cream.

I drove past a dairy CAFO on a road trip in Wisconsin a few years back. You could tell because there were some Holstein lawn ornaments out front, and a bunch of massive barns in rows off in the distance. The smell was terrible, but it was a unique kind of terrible that distinctly did not smell like cows.

It often seems like our country has a collective blind spot about the evils of factory farming and industrial agriculture when it comes to dairy, probably because the marketing leans so heavily into the goodness of the family farm. I really feel for the family farmers who remain, but I feel like I've been a bystander watching their slow death for as long as I can remember.
posted by gueneverey at 9:26 AM on March 14, 2021 [7 favorites]

Yes, US farm policy is so ducked. The Farm Bill actively destroys our food supply in the Gulf.
posted by eustatic at 12:54 PM on March 14, 2021

Rather a lot of the "Dairy Farmers" I know here in rural Pennsylvania have a "real job" where they make money (and get health insurance) to support their dairy cow habit, as if running a 75 dairy cow operation was some sort of normal people 'hobby' like woodworking... yeah, writing's on the wall there. I'm not happy about this, but nobody, including the American dairy farmer, should be expected to have a second job to support and maintain a dairy farm that is not, under the current structure, even remotely profitable.

We cry for the farm, we cry for the farmers, we weep for the lives of CAFO animals and lament the loss of the kindly dairy farmer and his herd of cows with names. However, we sidestep any actual change, regulation, or price structure that would make these small-scale farms able to turn a profit or compete.
posted by which_chick at 3:09 PM on March 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Rather a lot of the "Dairy Farmers" I know here in rural Pennsylvania have a "real job" where they make money

According to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, "89.6% of American farms today, the income from those farms is not the majority of the money made by the farmers. In other words, farmers have to have ... other income, which represents a majority of what they make for a living. It doesn't come from farming."
posted by riruro at 3:29 PM on March 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

I remember asking a dairy farmer I knew if he'd sell any milk/cream to me directly for my cheesemaking hobby and he said his contract with the big suppliers was exclusive and that he couldn't sell so much as a single quart to anyone else. In the end I was glad for that because I discovered that his operation, although small by "industry" standards, was still a big, nasty enterprise. The milk cows were rarely allowed outside, were fed mostly grain and were shot up with hormones to produce more. Always more.
posted by drstrangelove at 3:31 AM on March 15, 2021

I don't recall the dairy seeming any different when I visit the US. But whenever I'm in Japan I'm amazed that the milk is so much tastier. I've tried various higher-fat, organic, and unpasteurized milks here in Ontario but none can replicate the taste of a carton of regular Japanese milk.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:07 PM on March 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

any portmanteau, I've observed the same thing. Ditto for eggs, bread, other produce, etc.
If anyone here is versed in Japanese ag policy or can tell me the reasons, I'd like to know...
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 7:31 PM on March 15, 2021

bread

We'll have to agree to disagree on that although maybe they've upped their game in the last 20 years (I've been back since but don't think I bought any bread).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:00 PM on March 18, 2021