MILKING THE SYSTEM - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 131

became inflated with gases from decomposing manure. 9 The manure bubbles were large enough to be seen
from satellite photos, but the operator, who had declared bankruptcy after milk prices collapsed, could not
afford to repair the liner. 10 After the county shut down local roads and banned school buses from the sur-
rounding area, because of the risk posed by potential noxious gas releases or explosions, Indiana environ-
mental officials deflated the bubbles. 11
A one-thousand-cow dairy operation in Frederick County, Maryland, reimbursed the county and a local
city $254,900 for providing emergency water supplies, testing, and other costs after a 576,000-gallon ma-
nure spill in 2008 polluted the town's water supply, which had to be shut off for two months. 12
In 2009 a 250,000- to 300,000-gallon manure spill from a 660-head Pipestone County, Minnesota, dairy
leaked into a tributary after a pipe between manure basins clogged and overflowed. The spill killed fish
and closed a state park to swimmers for Memorial Day weekend after heightened levels of fecal coliform
were found in the park's waters. 13
The rise of the polluting factory-farmed dairy industry—4.9 million cows—has been more pronounced
in western states and has transformed the national dairy landscape over the past decade. An unbelievable
650 additional dairy cows were added every day between 1997 and 2007. 14 There are more than 2.7 million
cows on factory-farmed dairies in California, Idaho, Texas, and New Mexico.
The largest factory-farmed dairy counties produce as much untreated dairy waste as the sewage pro-
duced in major American metropolitan areas, which is required to go to treatment plants. The more than
464,000 dairy cows on factory-farmed dairies in Tulare County, California, produce five times as much
waste as the population in the greater New York City metropolitan area. 15 The nearly 240,000 dairy cows
in Merced County, California, produce about ten times as much waste as the city of Atlanta, Georgia.
The emergence of western factory-farmed dairies has contributed to the decline of local dairy farms in
the Southeast, Northeast, Upper Midwest, and parts of the Midwest. 16 Although traditional dairy states like
Wisconsin and New York added 340,000 dairy cows to the largest operations over the decade, the growth
in these states paled in comparison to the growth of factory-farmed dairies in western states.
Beginning in the 1800s, and continuing into the twentieth century, most milk was produced on small
farms and sold locally. As the country became more urbanized, farmers began selling milk to processors
for distribution in the city. After the advent of refrigerated railroad cars and trucks, marketing and distri-
bution for milk became more regional. Eventually, many farmers banded together to form cooperatives, so
that they could use collective bargaining with buyers. From just after World War II and into the late 1960s,
milkmen delivered a large percentage of the milk people drank to their homes. But as grocery store chains
appeared, power shifted to the retail sector and those companies that serve retail chains.
Only a few dairies dominated processing and distribution from the 1920s to the 1970s, including Borden
Dairy Company (later Kraft), Beatrice, Carnation, and Pet. According to a report by the USDA's Econom-
ic Research Service, “Acquisitions by corporations were at an all-time peak in the late 1920's when the
National Dairy Products Corporation and the Borden Company started their growth. After dropping off
during the Depression, acquisitions of more than 1,000 companies were recorded during World War II, a
level never again reached. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought a virtual halt to acquisitions by
the eight largest dairy companies in the mid-1950's.” 17
By the 1960s these companies had become part of large diversified firms created through mergers and
acquisitions. However, up until the 1990s, a large number of medium-size milk processors were still local,
family-owned businesses that bought milk from local dairies and supplied local consumers and retailers. 18
The extreme perishability and constant production of milk makes dairy farmers especially dependent on
their buyers. They have to move their milk while it is still fresh, which gives buyers substantial leverage
over farmers. This has become especially true as the milk-processing industry has consolidated and spe-
cialized, farmers have fewer and fewer options in their area, and small dairy farms cannot survive.