Editor’s note: This op-ed is by James H. Maroney Jr., who has a master’s degree in Environmental Law & Policy from Vermont Law School and is a former farmer.
Jerry Greenfield’s testimony before the House Agriculture Committee on why consumers deserve to be informed if their food contains GMO ingredients is another installation in a long, successful, public relations campaign to convince the public that Ben & Jerry’s “triple line” capitalism cares as much about consumers, farmers, the community and the environment as it does about its own profits.
Ben & Jerry’s has recently launched a website they call “Caring Dairy,” to proclaim that farmers should use sustainable farming practices like mechanical weed and pest control to guard water quality and the environment. They should take more time off to be with their wives and kids. The company’s slogan is “Happy Cows, Happy Farmers, Happy Planet.” Farmers who score points “get a little something extra for their production.” The B&J cow is dressed in mufti and there are cows frolicking in sunlit meadows dotted with lollipop trees.
Paying farmers a fair price so they can be good stewards of the land is a superb idea. But this is not B&J’s purpose. Caring Dairy’s purpose is to obscure the fact that the company’s profit margin is dependent upon the purchase of Class II milk, which is made according to federal policies that drive overproduction, low milk prices, farm attrition, rural economic decay and lake pollution.
In keeping with federal law dating back to the 1930s, raw milk is priced to processors depending upon its use: Class I milk is for beverage milk, priced the highest; Class II is for soft products, yogurt, cream, cottage cheese and ice cream; Class III is for hard cheese and Class IV is for dry milk products and butter; all milk, as it leaves the farm, is Class I. The price for Class I milk is rarely above the farmers’ cost of production; the prices for Class II, III and IV milk are set routinely below the cost of production.
The Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMO) milk pricing policy depends for its effect upon oversupply. If milk were scarce and customers sufficiently determined, all milk would clear the markets before noon. Trouble is, and again according to federal policies, milk is not scarce: government policies keep it constantly in surplus to ensure that prices remain low. Federal policy makers arrange this for the benefit of consumers and manufacturers, who comprise 99 percent of constituents. But for dairy farmers, the rural community and the planet, two-thirds of Ben & Jerry’s “triple bottom line,” it is a disaster.
The prevailing dairy farm business model, i.e., conventional, is chemical, pharmaceutical and capital intensive. Conventional farming was invented after World War II to boost yields and lower costs. The “Miracle of American Farming” was predicated upon replacing the high costs of mechanical weed control, crop rotation and labor with chemicals, the residues from which were externalized into the environment. It works: farm yields were soon double what they had been prior to petroleum-based herbicides and fertilizer. But it was no miracle: American farmers soon overproduced their markets, lowering prices, driving farms out of business and raising the specter of costly government farm support.
The modern dairy cow is not happy. She is artificially impregnated as a yearling and after 10 months, she will deliver a calf from which she is separated immediately.
Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz wanted yields to rise dramatically so prices would fall; he exhorted farmers in the 1970s to “plant fencerow to fencerow” and to “get big or get out.” Butz was a director on the boards of America’s largest farm chemical manufacturing companies and their business was booming. But the chemicals they were selling did not dissipate harmlessly. They polluted the nation’s streams and lakes from coast to coast. The Clean Water Act of 1972 left for another day non-point source pollution, which comes largely from conventional farms. The environment is not happy.
Today, Vermont’s dairy farmers are getting about $16/hundredweight (cwt) for their milk, same as they got in the mid 1980s, $5-$8/cwt below their cost of production, which is double what it was in the 1980s. That is why Vermont dairy farms are closing at the rate of 5-8 percent per year; that is why dairy farmers are not happy.
The modern dairy cow is not happy. She is artificially impregnated as a yearling and after 10 months, she will deliver a calf from which she is separated immediately. If the calf is a female, it will be raised and brought into the milking herd; if it is a bull calf, it will be sold for a few dollars that day to be raised in a veal crate. The cow will spend the rest of her life indoors on concrete; she will never go outside to graze or to lie down in the sun or to frolic with other cows under lollipop trees in high meadows. Modern dairy cows are not happy.
Dairy farm workers are not happy. They are increasingly drawn from the pool of illegal immigrants who work 12-hour shifts, 12 out of every 14 days, Sundays and holidays for scant wages, shabby housing and a path to citizenship. They receive no benefits. Immigrant farm workers are the closest to indentured servants we have in America.
Ben & Jerry’s is not responsible for federal milk pricing policies. But if we are to believe the message they put out on “Caring Dairy,” we might be inclined to believe the company would despise federal milk pricing policies, working conditions for immigrants, farm attrition and water pollution caused by the conventional farm paradigm. Happy Cows, Happy Farmers, Happy Planet? Please; Ben & Jerry’s buys conventionally made Class II milk.
Jerry Greenfield talks about GMOs before the House Agriculture Committee because he knows that with or without labeling, the price of Class II milk stays below the farmers’ cost of production. “Caring Dairy” cannot achieve any but the last third of their “triple bottom line” — profit — which is exquisitely dependent upon exploiting dairy farmers, dairy workers and the environment. This is the milk Ben & Jerry’s with its purchasing power actively supports. There is no indication on their website that they are anything but content to continue.
