Whenever I see Art Woolf's name on the op-ed page, I brace myself for another truly incredible argument from beyond the looking glass. His letter in the Nov. 30 Messenger (cross-posted on Vermont Tiger) once again renders me near speechless. He begins by observing that Vermont dairy farmers are "in a terrible pickle." Ignoring completely the role that dairy conglomerates and retail giants like Walmart have played in creating this "pickle," Woolf advances the following argument which barely alludes to the toll his beloved "free market capitalism" has taken on U.S. dairy farmers:
"Prices for their products are way down (in part due to the tremendous reduction in international demand for milk caused by the financial crisis and economic recession) and their costs keep going up. But it is disingenuous for Senator Sanders to suggest that despite being against allowing "guest" workers into the U.S., the predicament of the dairy industry in Vermont and elsewhere is so "desperate" that a guest worker program is needed to provide the farms with workers willing and able to do the manual labor jobs that farmers are unable to fill with local workers."
He then goes on to state the obvious:
"Agricultural laborer jobs just don't pay enough to attract Vermonters..."
and that
"If Vermont farmers had to pay a wage high enough to attract Vermonters, their economic plight would be even worse than it is today and even more farms would go out of business."
That said, Woolf's interest in the dairy farmers' plight and any consequent threat to local food security seems to have been spent as he moves quickly to the real meat of his matter; namely, equating small local dairy farmers with financial institutions that benefitted from TARP!
This is a tough topic to write about, but someone's got to do it. All those happy Holsteins cracking-wise in the California cheese commercials aren't telling the whole truth. Dairy has a darker side.
The only way that the more or less continuous milk production necessary for a profitable dairy operation can occur is if the cows calve frequently. Female calves increase the productive herd, but male calves are routinely culled and end up as hot dogs and luncheon meats. That's the simple reality; and even if your diet is primarily vegetarian, if you drink milk or eat milk products (and I do) this is the system from which we derive our food.
That is why the news of repeated violations against the humane treatment of animals by Bushway Packing of Grand Isle, so very close to home, is deeply and profoundly disturbing to me. I could barely make it through descriptions of the abuses committed against infant cattle at the facility, let alone the video footage compiled by the Humane Society of the United States who investigated the plant. If these animals must be killed so that dairy farms can maintain their already marginal profitability, there is absolutely no excuse for mistreatment of the calves on their way to slaughter.
I have no doubt that dairy farmers who care for the animals they raise find this as appalling as I do; but it does force the question once again of whether or not we are devoting too much of our resources to raising animals for food and not enough to growing sustainable food crops. When our food systems get really far out of whack is it really so surprising that the ethical and social fabric of human decency begins to fray from neglect?
Anyway, visit the Humane Society website for the full story...if you can bear it.
As will become immediately clear, I'm afraid, I am almost completely ignorant about dairying, except from the vantage point of a consumer. So at the risk of well-deserved ridicule I'm going to go ahead and suggest what I think may be a novel approach to improving the situation for small dairy farms.
Unless I am very much mistaken, uniformity of product is the number one objective in the processing of milk, coast to coast That's why you see almost nothing but Holsteins wherever you go in dairy country, whether it's California, Wisconsin or Vermont. I would venture a guess that even those many thousands (millions?) of head of Holsteins are all descended from just a few great producers. The object of selective breeding was to maximize yield of milk that was uniform and had the best butterfat profile for conventional dairy purposes. Probably a smart approach at the outset; but the very success of that model is now threatening dairy farmers ability to make ends meet. Even the co-ops that originally promised security for dairy farmers had to observe the rule of uniformity in order to satisfy market conditions. Finally, the small dairy farmer is nothing but a bit player in a super-giant dairy conglomerate presided over by rich guys who don't get out much. That is problem #1
I think problem number two may be a sustainability issue that is being over-looked because of problem #1. Anyone who is familiar with biodiversity issues in food crops can easily extrapolate what that threat might look like with regard to dairy herds. Hint: it's black and white and bred all over.
