Barbara Boxer, whose reputation is just to the right of Bernie Sanders, has gone to bat for factory dairy farms. The landscape of the dairy industry is such that the traditional dairy states like Wisconsin, New York, and Vermont are home to smaller farms (on average) than states like California and Idaho, where the dairy industry has been locating enormous factory farms with tens of thousands of cows in recent years. And right now all farms, big and small alike, are in trouble financially. The price of milk is below the cost of production and farms are therefore LOSING money for every gallon they produce.
Congress is on the verge of passing legislation to give money to help struggling dairy farmers, and Senators from traditional dairy states like New York want the money to favor small farms. That would send the money disproportionately to their states, but I don’t have a problem with that at all. The dairy culture in places like Wisconsin and Vermont is tangible when you visit those states. Loss of those farms would result in further moving the dairy industry west and with it would go a part of those states’ culture. The same could not be said of the enormous farms out west. Furthermore, enormous farms benefit disproportionately from the low-cost labor of undocumented workers, which rigs the market against smaller, family operations in which dairy farmers attempt to earn a living wage without breaking the law. I’ll be writing Barbara Boxer an email, asking her to quit shilling for factory farms. If you live in California, please join me in doing the same (if you live elsewhere, you can call Boxer’s Senate office at (202) 224-3553.
