Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
breaking down the farming system into components, maximizing the
productivity of these, and manufacturing the greatest commodity output.
This has resulted in steady increases in the production of milk, but with
many “unanticipated” consequences. The system provides non-stop,
maximum flows of nutrients to the herd, but requires a significant invest-
ment in growing feedstuffs, and then delivering these to the cows, which
in turn demands the dairy farmer to milk cows year round. The increases
in corn and soy production used to feed cows, stimulated in part by
federal subsidies, have had major, long-term environmental impacts. The
nitrogen chemical fertilizers applied to cornfields were beginning to
show up in Wisconsin groundwater, contaminating it and rendering it
undrinkable. Confined cows produce about 50 pounds of manure and
urine per day, which have to go somewhere.
2
Nitrates from fertilizer and manure are of particular concern in south-
west Wisconsin because of its sandy soils, which allow the movement of
agrochemicals into groundwater. In addition, environmental researchers
in Louisiana were beginning to document the impact of nitrogen from
the Mississippi River watershed on marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.
The socio-economic impacts of this production strategy are equally
significant. Making the system economically profitable requires greater
inputs of capital, machinery, and labor. Smaller family farms are lost
when larger dairy farmers buy out their smaller, less competitive neigh-
bors. The acceleration of inputs and production driven by these factors
has been called a “technological treadmill.”
3
Intensive rotational grazing reverses the industrial logic of conven-
tional dairy cow husbandry by re-designing the feeding system. Instead
of plowing, planting, fertilizing, spraying herbicides and insecticides,
harvesting, storing, mixing, and delivering feedstuffs to continuously
confined animals, the grazier leads the cows to a pasture enclosed by an
electric fence, and then rotates them to various paddocks depending on
the relative availability of grass. Hassanein and Kloppenburg describe
the system:
. . . monocultures are replaced by perennial polycultures. . . . Rotational grazing
greatly reduces the need for specialized and expensive machinery, petroleum
products, and agricultural chemicals. Manure handling is required much less fre-
quently because cows only spend time in the barn during milking. Many graziers
are trying to “go seasonal” by synchronizing the cows' lactation with pasture
growth in the region. Seasonal milking can allow farm families to “dry off the
