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How transparent should farmers be?

/ dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

There is no counter argument out there. Could it be because there is no humane practice?

Can’t take your word for it. You need to explain your practices and where your product goes. What happens to your male calves? Etc.

Show me! Tell me! I would like to keep consuming dairy.

The campaign against you is growing.

Honestly. I’m very open to being educated. It was an FYI. “You” = “dairy industry”.

One of your biggest hurdles is that like the cattle industry, u appear secretive. Transparency might be too late.

These tweets from a journalist with a self-proclaimed “love for our living planet and my opposition to her corporate destruction” has made an understandable choice: to believe a charity dedicated to the welfare of animals rather than an “industry”. Yes, although 98 per cent of Australian dairy farms are family farms where cows roam free, the perception is that we act as an industry in perpetrating animal cruelty on factory farms in the name of profit.

Why do I say it’s understandable? Do a little test to see for yourself. Google “bobby calf”.

Animal welfare organisations dominate the results. The people who live and breathe animal care – farmers – are missing. Our voices are not being heard.

I don’t really believe that Animals Australia campaigns will cause a noticeable drop in milk consumption because Aussies love to drink milk but these activists and their followers have worked hard to win the attention of policy makers.

Some of their views are valid, some are ludicrous, and some of the policymakers may well be swayed to adopt them. If we want to be able to operate farms free from a tangle of compliance or, worse, mandatory practices that are actually bad for animal welfare, we must learn from our detractors.

Animals Australia knows that science and logic do not resonate when it comes to animal welfare. Emotions quite rightly do because animal welfare only triumphs when the custodians hold the care of their animals close to their hearts. And because everyone knows that politicians are quick to follow popular opinion, we cannot be satisfied with lobbying in Canberra. We’ve got to tell the story like it is to anyone who will listen.

Tonight, Twitter forum AgChatOz will host a discussion on bobby calf welfare and other dairy practices. I will be there (baby bedtime permitting) and I hope lots of other dairy farmers will be too.

Would I advise my kids to become farmers? Country Hour asks the question

/ dairymilkmaid / 5 Comments

Do farmers want their kids to be farmers? A Victorian parliamentary inquiry is looking at why young people don’t want to further their education in agricultural studies. Early submissions says farming parents are one of the greatest deterrents… Hear more on the Country Hour today, and tell us, would you advise your kids to get a career in farming?

In just a few minutes, ABC Radio’s Country Hour will ask the million-dollar question: if life is so good on the land, would you recommend farming to your children?

I would, so long as Zoe and Alex have a passion for animals and the land and don’t have expensive tastes. Farming is nothing if not exciting and challenging. On the other hand, it’s anything but lucrative, particularly if you’re still struggling with a large debt burden as many young farmers must.

Even if they decide to become farmers, I wouldn’t recommend ag studies. The tradition of many farming families is to “get another trade to fall back on first” and it’s wise, whether that trade is boiler making or journalism. It makes sense to learn from other workplaces, acquire fresh skills, make new circles of friends, establish an independent identity and to experience being an employee before you become a manager.

Perhaps even more importantly, second jobs for farmers are incredibly common and the average Australian dairy farming family makes about as much income off the farm as on it. Employment helps us survive the bad years and ride out cash flow droughts.

And, if the worst happens, there are always options.

Farmers twice as likely to suicide

/ dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

Farming is an addiction for many. Once you’re in it, you can hardly imagine another life. Sadly, it seems that is quite literally true for some. According to research reported in The Weekly Times, farmers are twice as likely to commit suicide than other Australians.

Research in 2010 showed farmers are among three occupations with significantly higher risk of male suicide, alongside transport and construction workers.

Between 1997 and 2002, suicide rates among Australian farmers were between 1.5 and 2.2 times higher than among the general population.

The researchers want to know why and so do I. My suspicion is that part of the cause may lie in one of the legendary strengths of the farmer psyche: resilience. We deal with drought, floods, price collapses and huge workloads by just getting on with it. I’ve often heard people refer to these stressful events by saying, “Ah, but that’s just part of farming”.

But what happens when they all happen at once, coincide with a tragedy or simply become too much? Does that mean we’re “not made of the right stuff to cut it”? Absolutely not. The flip side of the resilient farmer is the whinger. Maybe we ought to value those “whinges” more than we do. They might just save lives.

Unless we learn to work together, the animals will be the losers

/ dairymilkmaid / 9 Comments
You know, something diabolical has happened to our sensibilities as we use animals to feed ourselves. We have lost something in the process. It’s called CONSCIENCE.
I don’t know how dairy farmers can lie straight in bed, when they kill the babies … just as the baby seals are killed for their fur, these poor little animals don’t even get a chance to grow a pelt, let alone have time to be alive!!!! Where are we going as a species, to use other creatures in such callous, cruel ways? I am beyond disgusted, I’m appalled and ashamed. GET A CONSCIENCE FOR GODS SAKE, ALL THOSE IN THE DAIRY INDUSTRY.
Friday at 18:19

I don’t blame Sally Hook for that comment posted on the Bush Telegraph Facebook page. Her response to the reported dairy practices was very typical and I’d feel the same way if I wasn’t better informed. Sally and every other Australian has a right to know her food is ethically produced and if we dairy farmers feel slighted by the comments that misinformation brings, we only have ourselves to blame.

Farmers are understandably wary of the vitriol that drips from the tongues of many animal activists.  But that is no excuse to keep people in the dark. Nor can we leave it to our “leaders” to communicate with the rest of the world because it is impossible to delegate telling your own story. Sally needs to hear it from the horse’s mouth, no matter how scary that might be for us.

At the same time, I’m hoping the animal activists will also take a step closer to the table. Sally did. After two days of online “talks” with real farmers, as distinct from agripoliticians, she posted this comment:

I urge the good people of the dairy industry to keep pushing.
Sunday 2 hours ago

We can and must build bridges with Australians who share our passion for animals. Defending the indefensible minority, as industry people caught like rabbits in the spotlight tried and failed miserably to do on national radio, is not only morally bankrupt but counterproductive in the extreme.

Sally is right. The good people of the dairy industry must keep pushing.

Ashamed to be a dairy farmer today

/ dairymilkmaid / 13 Comments

Yesterday, two industry representatives and a dairy farmer spoke about the treatment of bull calves on Australia’s Radio National program, Bush Telegraph.

It made Victoria’s dairy farmers appear as callous as Big Tobacco and today, I am ashamed to call myself a farmer of any description, let alone one that bludgeons premature calves to death with an axe.

The media feeds voraciously on such hideous depictions and it will be all over the internet and in the mainstream media unless something with even more news appeal happens this weekend.

This is something we can’t deal with by talking about industry standards and so on. Nobody believes that stuff. None of it resonates in the soul. We need to tell people the whole truth and how we feel about it.

And the truth is this:

I will never induce the birth of a calf unless its mother’s life depends on it. In the four years since I took over custodianship of the family farm, this hasn’t happened.

I can barely manage to hear the shot ring out as a suffering animal is euthanased humanely, even though I know it is the right thing to do.

I will always put the quality of our animals’ lives before profit.

We sell every bull calf we can to neighbours who rear them until they are big and powerful steers, even though we sacrifice income to do it this way.

The bottom line is that I will not do anything on the farm that I could not show five-year-old Zoe without any qualms. Our farm is also our home and we could not live with cruelty.

Farmer’s forums are jammed with distressed dairy farmers this morning and I spoke long into the night about it with another yesterday. I am ashamed yet I am proud to know I am not alone in this. If you are a farmer reading this, please add your voice to the news forums and don’t be afraid to tell them how your heart guides you.

Easy to forget what makes farm life unforgettable

/ dairymilkmaid / 1 Comment
MyFarm screenshot

The incredible MyFarm experiment

Both bold and bizarre, the National Trust’s MyFarm online experiment in farming and food production gives 10,000 members of the public a say in the running of a real working farm. I had a look at the MyFarm website for the first time today and was astonished by the account of a farmer assisting a calving. I count myself as someone who appreciates (actually, loves) farm life but reading about it from an observer’s standpoint is something else. People were moved.

MyFarm is a ground-breaking project bridging the gap between farmers and other members of the community.  While we don’t have anything like that here in Australia, there are lots of opportunities to connect people and farmers.  Farm Day does an amazing job of getting people out to farms and meeting real farmers, while the Archibull Prize and Picasso Cows help students learn about agriculture. Farming is even on Facebook with Farming is the New Black and quite a few farmers have begun blogs like mine to offer a window into life on the land.

Isn’t it odd that something as abstract as the internet is having such a role in bringing the very earthy lives of farmers closer to those of townfolk?

The casualties of the milk war still to be counted and breaking news says they will grow

/ dairymilkmaid / 4 Comments

Media coverage of the senate inquiry’s report on the milk war by Coles suggests there have been only victors but this only tells half the story, for every war must have casualties. Instead, my reading of the report is that the government feels there is not much it can do about the fallout.

Gobbledegook like this:

…the ability for processors to ‘walk away’ from negotiations with collective bargaining groups (as highlighted during the committee’s 2010 inquiry), market realities such as the number of drinking milk processors in some areas and the fact that the processors must deal with the two major supermarket chains that dominate the grocery sector, can mitigate the benefits of collective bargaining arrangements.

and this:

Much of this information, however, concentrated on concerns about shifts in sales away from the processors’ branded milk products to the discounted supermarket private label milk. As a matter of overall principle, these types of free market outcomes should not be a matter for government. Many private label grocery products have grown in share in recent years…It should not be a matter for public policy to protect brands that consumers no longer value. It also does appear that the steadily increasing sales of private label milk—which have more than doubled their share of sales in supermarkets over the past decade—is a trend that is unlikely to be reversed.

…actually means that dairy farmers are standing right in the path of the cross-fire as Coles and Woolies spray litres (or should I say “rounds”?) of discounted homebrand milk at each other.

On top of all this, there are news reports that private labels will soon occupy far more supermarket shelf space. It won’t be just dairy farmers in the firing line. All of Australia’s food manufacturers and producers should see this milk war as simply an opening salvo.

How ironic then, that the most articulate description of the milk war’s impact comes from Woolworths:

…this price move has effectively re-based the price of white of milk across Australia overnight, and for an unknown period into the future, which also potentially devalues the whole milk category in the eyes of the consumer. In effect, the consumer baseline for price is now at 1990s levels, but with 2011 input costs for all parts of the supply chain.

Hang on, aren’t farmers supposed to be whingers? Turns out we’re the happiest workers!

/ dairymilkmaid / Leave a comment

I didn’t see it but a friend of mine at Dairy Australia, Julie Iommi, tells me that the presenters of the Today Show concluded that farmers are whingers because we like to get it all off our chests when leave our isolation and meet someone. Oh dear.

For a start, dairy farmers are not all that isolated. My nearest neighbours are less than a kilometre away. Second, look at this newly reported research and here, on the radio.

“IF you’re whinging about your job and the things that annoy you most, you probably don’t work in farming, event management or the legal profession.”

So why are farm employees so happy? A commentator on UK career happiness research suggests that good jobs have this in common: high interaction with people, are out of a conventional office, and do things that have clear outcomes. Okay, we don’t have high interaction with people but we’ve got something even better – animals!

She contrast this with the least happy professions in administration:

“Admin work usually means a lack of control over what you do. Admin work is part of a clear pecking order (and when you’re constantly reminded you’re low on the ladder, that doesn’t feel great).”

“There is something about that office-admin environment that feels toxic. Office politics, an impenetrable pecking order, stuck in an airless office box with a lack of freedom about your day… plus a question mark over the point of what you actually contribute every day. Sound familiar? It’s not just admin workers is it?”

Farm employees often work either side-by-side with their “bosses” or are given lots of freedom to do their work without anybody breathing down their necks.

No wonder it’s a great career!

How big are Australian dairy farms? And what is a “mega dairy”?

/ dairymilkmaid / 9 Comments

There’s a lot of talk of factory farming at the moment. Animal activists use the phrase to shock us and judging by the comments in response to John Bunting’s Journal, average US dairy farmers are afraid of being overtaken by “mega dairies”.

While Australia’s dairy farms are getting bigger, I haven’t heard of anything on the scale discussed by our American counterparts, so I thought I’d ask the gurus at Dairy Australia for the official stats.

It turns out that the vast majority of Australian dairy farms are still family-owned. Only 2 per cent are corporate. This does not surprise me. As leading farm consultant John Mulvany points out, corporate investors demand higher returns on their assets than the meagre 1 or 2 per cent that most dairy farms achieve. Second, paid labour is both expensive and inflexible in this highly volatile industry. This bothers me because it assumes that farm families should not expect the same standard of living as their employees.

The average Australian dairy herd has 220 milkers and here is the breakdown of herds across the spectrum:

small

medium

large

x-large

xx-large

total
% farms

26%

38%

24%

6%

5%

100%
% milk

8%

27%

31%

13%

20%

100%

What’s perhaps even more interesting (and heartening) are the definitions of size.

Small: Herd size of less than 150

Medium: Herd size between 150 – 300

Large: Herd size between 301 – 500

X-large: Herd size between 501 – 700

XX-large: Herd size greater than 700

So, when the US talks of mega-dairies milking thousands and thousands of cows, Aussies talk of XXL dairies milking more than 700.