Reading at the Table

When you were a kid, did your parents have a conniption fit if you read a book or magazine at the dinner table? That's never been much of an issue here at our house; our table is home to a continually changing stash of reading materials......plus the TV remote, of course. At noon, Husband and I push the magazines aside to make room for our plates, and then we stare dreamily into each other's eyes as we munch our sandwichs or leftover goulash......HA!.......not on your life! The truth is......our eyes are trained on the pages of our favorite periodicals! Rarely does the TV get turned on during the daytime.......TV is an evening thing around here, for those who actually watch it......or snore in front of it.

Over lunch the other day, Husband suddenly pushed a dairy newspaper under my nose and said, "Look at this! Look at the contrast in these two articles, right on the same page!" He was referring to the two stories which accompany the pictures in the photo below. The top article was reporting on a gigantic factory dairy farm being built in Minnesota (the top picture in the photo).......it will house 5660 milk cows, 340 heifers, and 3590 calves! The article below it told the story of a young guy in Iowa who has just purchased a 34-cow dairy herd to get his start in farming. Wow........what a difference! (We milk 75 cows, BTW.)
My first inclination was to be very critical of the huge dairy enterprise; I dislike seeing family dairy farms being pushed out of existence by factory "farms". However, here are some of the facts I learned in the top article: The area in Minnesota where this big operation is being built has lost many family dairy farms over the past couple of decades. As a result, the dairy processing industry there is in jeopardy, meaning many jobs could be lost. So, the area sent representatives to California to see if any big dairy owners from out there---who are being displaced by urban sprawl---would be interested in relocating to Minnesota. But, the California folks said, "No......we don't want to move to Minnesota, because the environmental regulations there are so tight." (A good thing, in my opinion.) So the Minnesota group decided to build its own factory farm in order to bring dairying back to its area. Supposedly, the large dairy operation will also include a methane-digesting system to process the manure which will provide enough electricity to power a nearby small town. That sounds like a good thing---it will be a provider of renewable energy---so maybe I shouldn't be overly-critical of this gargantuous dairy. Sigh......and here I was hoping to rake it over the coals big-time.

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However, I certainly do wish the best to the young independent farmer in the second article who is just getting started in dairying with his 34 cows. It will be a sad day in the future if family farms disappear from the landscape, and agriculture falls completely into the domain of corporate factory-style operations. More and more, it appears that day could be coming. Everyone seems to believe that BIGGER IS BETTER. Like around here where we live, any land that goes up for sale or rent gets snatched up by big grain farmers and investors, because they're the only ones who can afford to pay the outrageously high prices for land and machinery. The big get bigger; the little ones fade away.

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Here's a possible consolation, though.......along with the demise of the family farming way of life.......there won't be ding-batty farmwife bloggers to contend with anymore, either! We can only hope, eh?!
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Let me ask you this: If you were a cow........where would you rather live? On a huge factory farm, where you would be tended to by employees who identify you simply by a number on your eartag? Or would your desire be to live on a small family farm where you would be given an actual name, you would be allowed to spend time outdoors when the weather permits, and you would have an entire family caring for you? What do ya think? (Most likely, IF you are actually a cow.......you could care less about any of this, as long as you have plenty of hay and silage to munch and a dry, comfortable place to lounge.)

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