At a time like this, I find it worthwhile to reflect on how much the industry I grew up with has changed over the course of the past generation. If you’ve followed these articles, you know that my wife and I own a fourth-generation dairy farm on the outskirts of Monroe, in Southcentral Wisconsin. Our farm has been in the family for nearly 100 years. In 2031 we will achieve the milestone of being recognized as a Century Farm which, I am sure, will bring forth a celebration worthy of its status.
I think back to the 1980s and 1990s, when I was in grade school. I clearly recall the teachers welcoming the students and asking, “How many of you are from a farm?” To this, at least a third of the class would raise their hand. Farming was such a part of our community’s fabric, that social events were planned at times that accommodated the milking schedules of the area dairy farmers.
So connected was the community to the concept of food production, that for a grade-school level cooking project, I demonstrated how easy it was to churn butter. For this, I brought fresh cream from our farm to make the butter, and enough milk for the non-farming classmates to try. We thought nothing of this — having access to raw milk and treating it as the food source it was. The kids from non-farming households loved the raw milk and for the record, no-one got sick from it.
This connectivity is a good thing. However you want to quantify it, communities that are surrounded by a variety of successful, independently owned and operated farms are socially and economically healthier than communities that are surrounded by industry.
Today, our farm is considered an outlier for being a small operation, bordering on hobby-farm status. By comparison, the average size dairy farm in Wisconsin is now over 200 cows, while the largest farms in the US milk tens of thousands of cows: Threemile Canyon Farms in Oregon boasts some 33,000 cows, Faria Brothers in Texas comes in at 95,000 cows. My farm’s annual milk production is a daily rounding error compared to these types of operations.
My purpose today is not to criticize the consolidation and industrialization of our nation’s food supply. Undeniably, farms have gotten bigger, and factory farming has squeezed out the little guy. This transition makes sense — we are a society that is built on the concept of cheap, mass-produced food. With a population that has exploded, national policy is desperate to feed hungry mouths that have less and less of a direct connection to the production of food.
On top of that, we have a food system that is engineered to empower the middlemen by actively separating producers from consumers. As a farmer, I find it incredibly demoralizing to see superior marketing, packaging, celebrity endorsements, and supermarket product placement for highly processed plant-based milk and dairy alternatives that cannot possibly be healthier or more environmentally sustainable than cow’s milk. A recent series of studies fawned over cockroach milk — literally, cockroach milk — being “healthier” than cows milk.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again — all you need to know about what is wrong with the US dairy industry is to understand that here in Wisconsin, the “Dairy State”; “America’s Dairyland”; during June Dairy Month, it is easier for you all to get raw fish sushi, than it is to go to a farm and get milk.
The question that begs to be asked is, who does the separation between farmers and consumers really benefit?
The bottom line is, how we as a society treat our livestock is a precursor to how we will ultimately treat each other. As the production of food becomes less and less personal, as the production of food becomes industrialized and therefore less individualistic, so too will human health care, education, personal representation, economic autonomy, and upward social mobility.
Of course, there is an alternative. If small farms are going to survive, they will need to develop a direct-to-consumer relationship of some sort. My family’s farm will survive into the next generation because of the farmstays and authentic agricultural experiences we have developed. In terms of representation, there is much work to be done — I regularly host cow milking demonstrations and get asked, by adults, “Why isn’t the milk cold when it comes out of the cow?”
One of my favorite concepts to tackle during our outreach and education is the concept of sustainability in the food system. People have been brainwashed into believing that highly processed foods that are distributed over great distances are somehow “healthier” or more “environmentally friendly” than purely natural, locally-sourced products.
In the spirit of June Dairy Month, know this: To say that a cow is destructive to the environment is like saying a fish is destructive to the ocean. It’s not the cow, so much as how you raise and feed them — just like us.
— Dan Wegmueller is the owner of Wegmueller Farms and his column appears regularly in the Times. His website is https://www.farmforthought.org.
