Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Klar, a Vermont grass-fed beef farmer, and an attorney and pastor who lives in Westfield. This piece was published in the Newport Daily Express on May 26.
[V]ermont faces serious problems in its agriculture sector. This problem has long been serious: The number of dairy farms in Vermont began to decline about 100 years ago. The slogan then was “get big or get out.” Consolidation improved efficiency at the expense of diversity, pushing the smallest, “least productive” farmers out of farming forever. But those larger farms have become the “most productive” of agricultural water pollution in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus contamination of Vermont’s waterways.
With the number of dairy farms down by some 85 percent since 1947, the situation has become quite dire for the remaining farmers. The three most pressing problems appear to be market, labor and pollution. The first two are economic problems for the farmers; the last one a societal concern for everyone.
Market
People are drinking less milk. Alternatives are available. Genetics and production efficiencies have steadily improved. Artificial insemination using pre-sexed sperm provides higher percentages of heifer calves. Increasing supply coupled with declining demand is pinching prices below the costs of production. If dairy farms were factories, they would cease production, or shift product lines.
Different market initiatives have been tried, including subsidies, cow purchasing to reduce cow numbers, and price controls. Canada and Europe employ quotas, such that farmers are only permitted to produce and sell specific quantities of milk. Some or all of these methods might be employed now, but Vermont’s struggles are particularly acute and the rest of the country is unconcerned. Our Green Mountains make for a difficult climate to milk cows competitively: Longer and colder winters push feed and other production costs higher than most other regions.
Most farmers have no choice but to just go deeper into debt and “wait it out,” a prescription of attrition that has historically induced yet more consolidation and a loss of yet more farms — most often the smaller ones. This prescription is killing the patient: Our Vermont landscape has been transformed, and the concentration of larger numbers of animals also concentrates manure and industrial inputs (herbicides and pesticides). But these industrial inputs, which include glyphosate (Round-up) for GMO feed-corn, are also intensified to increase productivity per cow — thus, economic pressures increase pressure on our ecosystem by increasing the use of chemicals and concentrating pollutants geographically, simultaneously.
Always and forever, it seems, we are told we must sacrifice the health of our soils, waters and air for our “economy.”
This model reflects a modern industrial crisis that faces America as a nation. Always and forever, it seems, we are told we must sacrifice the health of our soils, waters and air for our “economy.” Fossil fuels, fracking, coal, factory construction — all are embraced in the never-ending (and ever-increasing) fervor to “feed the machine” of growth at any cost. Our ecosystem is being devoured for the short-term fueling of this industrial mindset, in our insatiable demand for immediate gratification, new gadgets, cheap food and novel entertainments. We do this at our peril, and our children’s peril. In a speech in 1974, writer and activist Wendell Berry cautioned that if America continued such agricultural practices we would “… invite, and deserve, calamity.”
Currently the debate seems to be centered on the issue of these farms’ dependency on cheap labor, particularly the “illegal” immigrants who fill the positions that local laborers refuse. It is a red herring to propose that these cheap workers will solve our larger industrial contagion: They are more akin to the fingers in the dike; the last cheap input to be squeezed for every drop to keep afloat the unsustainable business “model” of conventional dairy.
Labor
Farming is grueling work, and it is true that migrants will do the work that most locals decline. But to encourage illegal entry and employment is not a solution. And even with a more permissive immigration policy, neither the milk market nor industrial pollution problems will be resolved.
We should improve the process for immigrant work visas, as outlined recently by John McClaughry (“Solving the Immigrant Farm Labor Problem,” Ethan Allen Institute). The expansion of work visas is the “middle road” which provides short-term relief for both farmers and workers, while respecting the common-sense necessity for border screening. This would also remove the unfair advantage (whether real or perceived) gained by some conventional farms over workers and neighboring farms by paying low wages and avoiding workers’ compensation and other tax contributions.
Pollution
Our government’s regulatory response to the industrial farm problem is well-intentioned but dysfunctional: It casts a wide net to include even the tiniest of farms; it does not prohibit the continued use of glyphosate and other toxic chemicals; and it does nothing to relieve the broader market problem mentioned above.
The small family farms have never had the political clout to fend off regulations that burden them disproportionately and contribute to their extinction. Big Dairy has long employed its predatory influence to gain advantage. It is not that small farms should be unregulated — but our government has set itself a gargantuan task of enforcement, when it could be more effective focusing on the largest polluters. The emergency response needed for our waterways cannot afford dithering, bloated bureaucracy, and compromise to special (industrial) interests.
Big Dairy wishes the Vermont public to “watch the birdie” of the first two factors I mention here — the milk market and labor pool — so as to bury or suspend the environmental policing which is long overdue. This was evident in a recent VTDigger article (“Fate of Vermont agriculture in Washington weighs heavy,” April 16, 2017), which observed “And while dairy protection programs and phosphorus management were on the menu, farmers made clear to [U.S. Rep. Peter Welch] that battling President Donald Trump’s tough immigration policies should be priority No. 1.” Meanwhile, Vermont’s Farm Bureau (which does not advocate for small farms) opposes GMO labeling, or any restrictions on Round-up or other herbicides and pesticides.
As our dairy crisis worsens, the “dairy industry” will flex its lobbying muscles to perpetuate the soil degradation, water pollution, small-farm displacement, and threats to human health that it has long supplanted in the pursuit of profit. It would much prefer to divert our attention to the Big Bad Wolf of Trump’s immigration policies than have us look under the carpet at the monster in our own bedroom. Sustainable, organic farming has a future: Big Dairy is in its death throes.
