For all the dairy lobby chatter about plant-based alternatives destroying the cow milk industry, a bigger reckoning is pitting mega-farms versus smaller, independent dairies. The Guardian headed to Minnesota to showcase these struggles, talking with smaller dairy farmers who have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy in recent years. While the piece entertains the notion that mega-dairies can achieve efficiencies of scale, leading to cheaper milk for consumers, its sympathy for small farmers is palpable. (The story’s subheading is: “A collapse in the number of dairy farmers in states such as Minnesota is destroying livelihoods and hollowing out rural life.”) Noting the state lost 1,100 dairies between 2012 and 2017, the story alternates between struggling small farmers’ personal anecdotes and raw descriptions of animal treatment at the state’s biggest dairy farm, Riverview LLP (without noting many of these practices are common, no matter the farm size). It’s a tidy piece, but that doesn’t take away from the hard truth that industry consolidation is pushing thousands of farmers out of the business. Read more in The Guardian.
Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse…
Highway 7 runs north-south through western Washington, carving its way through a landscape sparsely dotted…
One of the greatest pleasures I had as a child growing up in the Chicago…
Undocumented immigrants experience food insecurity at much higher rates than other populations, yet they are…
Writer Charlotte Druckman and editor Rebecca Flint Marx are both Jewish journalists living in New…
Last fall, first-year law student Karissa Kang arrived at Yale University and quickly set out…