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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
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- From: "Fox, Dan" <foxd@sunyocc.edu>
- To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: [Livingontheland] Re. Cattle and toxic fumes
- Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 10:51:51 -0400
Su Do, That was a chilling report on the megadairies, thanks for
posting it. I live in a neighboring county and have dairy farms all around me,
both conventional and organic. The conventional folks are all adding space for
confined operations, mostly in huge, flimsy looking pole-barn structures (hope
the wind doesn’t blow too hard). The smaller guys around me are
conventional, but they have my admiration for their work ethic and commitment
to their families. We barter our maple syrup, honey and eggs for venison and
baked goods with them. Although many of their practices are not what could be
hoped, the scale is still small enough, for now. Our meat we get from an
organic dairy and we get our milk raw from yet another organic dairy nearby
(for our pets ;^)). Unfortunately, organic prices have fallen while feed
costs have risen, forcing some organic dairies back into conventional. In my
opinion, a small-scale organic dairy farmer is a pillar of his or her
community, as it is no small matter to make the switch and the benefits are
enormous to the local ecology and human community. Maybe rising energy costs
will neutralize the scale issue. The really big guys are bastards. Wendell Berry said somewhere that “country life”,
contrary to what many people think, is not “getting away from it
all” in some bucolic hideaway, but is in reality the “front lines”
of the excesses of the industrial economy. With the factory farms, timber
operations, and mines in this area, I can certainly attest to that. Dan Fox |
- [Livingontheland] Re. Cattle and toxic fumes, Fox, Dan, 04/04/2008
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