Didn’t intend to insult, just confirming that you don’t own a “factory” farm. I work in the conservation field and a good part of my life working with dairy farms if all sizes. When I think of factory farms it’s the ones with several to tens of thousands of cows. And yes many of them are still family owned. The biggest problem we have with these mega farms is managing the millions of gallons of waste produced when so many animals are so concentrated. It leads to serious water quality issues, not mention the increase reliance on pesticides and herbicides to increase efficiency.
I admit to not reading the story ( subscription required) but the list given in the original comment was more appropriately giant Agri-business conglomerates that are no friend of the small, medium, or large farms. They are part of the reason farmers get such a small portion of the food dollar spent by Americans. I for one try to be as self reliant as possible and we, in this country, are very spoiled by low food prices. I do my part by buying locally and would personally be ok paying more if the profit would find its way to the producer instead of big agri-business.
I hope that clarifies my comment. Again, no offense intended. And I’m done
… too much typing on this dang phone.
I wasn't offended. That's why the smilie after that statement. I own a cow-calf beef operation that sells directly into the so-called "factory" feedlot system. I have farmed for half my life, longer than any other job I have ever had, having been tutored by my father in law, a former dairyman who then switched to beef later in life.
You have stated the perfect activist viewpoint representation. It comes from people who have grown used to cheap and plentiful food and rarely takes into account the costs of producing in other ways. As I said, agriculture cannot wear a halo in all regards, but it has vastly improved over the last 50 years. I agree that there are environmental tradeoffs and impacts, just as there are environmental costs to all aspects of accommodating a ballooning global human population that is really already too big for the planet's natural ability to sustain it.
To feed the mouths we have, and the ones that are coming, at an affordable price in a low ROI industry, there are trade-offs. There always will be tradeoffs, because our population exceeds the Earth's natural capacity without applying efficiency systems to production.
A farm just up the road from mine sells its "green" Black Angus beef directly through an on-site store. Ribeye is $29.95 a pound (currently, they are regularly $14.95 a pound at Kroger and were on sale last week at $9.99 a pound). Hamburger is $12 a pound ("green" Greenwise at Kroger is $6.99). If people want to pay for it, there are lots of better yet much less efficient ways to raise animals. But generally, average hardworking American families don't want to pay for it. The upper class is presently financing the specialty "green" and "sustainable" beef operations with their higher prices, as regular folks can't pay that. Wagyu beef, for example, is currently the largest growing breed in the United States, to satisfy an upscale palate.
In other words, the farmer's success in providing cheap and plentiful food has allowed a first in human history – people can actually CHOOSE their food and price range.
Corn is a particular area where there are lots of less efficient "green" ways to grow it (although I'll add that most organic farms use a "natural" pesticide legally). Back in 1960, when each farm fed 26 people instead of 166, we were much less efficient and much harder on the land. We on average are currently producing about 5-6 times the amount of this cornerstone crop per acre over the early '60s numbers, and doing it with far less soil loss. 200 bushels an acre is not an amazing number anymore, even on marginal land. The entire rest of food production relies on corn or products of corn, and corn that is priced five times higher than it is now would have myriad inflationary effects on almost every processed food and on meat, as well.
Then there's the fact that the middlemen between farmer and table are 75% of the price of food. It's all a balancing equation between production costs, their influence on retail price, and production methods. The reason farms, and especially crop farms, grow in size is because of the economies of scale needed in a low ROI endeavor, as in my cattle example from before. If you are buying a $500,000 combine, you want to amortize that investment across as many acres as you can. That goes for every single input on the farm, which is the only business enterprise that buys its inputs at retail and then sells at a future undetermined price set by the marketplace. That's the essential business nut to crack, right there, for a farmer. Those who are good at it make money. It takes a very sharp pencil and the maximum operation you can sustain on your resources.
In livestock, diss pigs for the lagoons, but they fail to ever consider what it would take to field-raise those animals in a "green" setting, or the non-source pollution that would create. Chicken houses are considered inhumane, but no one ever looks at what the costs would be of truly free-range chicken (not birds in big cages they market as "free range" now). Cattle are said to be these awful greenhouse gas emitters (which is very much a subject of academic debate), but it remains true that livestock convert plant material from land that cannot be otherwise used for crop production into high protein foods we otherwise would not have. My own farm is made up of lands like that.
While there will never be a form of farming or ranching that lacks environmental impacts, and there never has been, U.S. ag has tremendously increased its output, on a smaller footprint, over the past five decades. "Sustainability" is the hot topic at all levels of ag now, and has been for almost a decade. Production efficiency and animal welfare have dramatically increased, on less land and with less impact on the land. Is there still work to be done? Yes. But while being relentlessly criticized, the American farmer still delivers the most abundant food supply in the world at the lowest cost, so that the most people can afford to access it. That is truly a matter of national security.
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