Rethinking Raising Animals in the Family Farm
By Donna Reynolds
The small family farm in America—a bright red barn, hens in the hen house, cows grazing in a lush pasture—what a great image! Politicians, advertisers, movie directors, and the general public all seem to love and support this apparently wholesome way of making a living. The small farmers involved in animal agriculture believe they’re producing healthy, nutritious, and much-needed food, they believe that no one cares more about the animals than they do, and they believe that one day, they’ll pass their farms on to their children so their offspring can continue to provide this important food to a grateful population. Since Americans—and farmers especially—are told repeatedly by the government and Big Ag how essential and delicious meat and dairy products are in our diet, it’s no surprise that these farmers feel a responsibility to deliver their “necessary” products. But times have changed, the planet has warmed, the people have gotten fatter and sicker, and we’ve finally learned that sadly, animal agriculture is not the answer, and instead, is the cause of many of our environmental and health problems that we’re experiencing today.
Healthy and Nutritious?
The meat and dairy industries have certainly done a fantastic marketing job of saying how great their products are and how they’re necessary for a healthy diet. But this is not true—it’s just the opposite. The World Health Organization has classified red meat as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans, and processed meat is classified as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans, yet we continue to serve it to our kids in their school lunches! Eating red meat has also been associated with colorectal, pancreatic, and prostate cancer.(1) Hardly healthy and nutritious.
And dairy products, especially cheese—the greatest source of saturated fat in the American diet, are no better, having contributed greatly to the obesity problem in the U.S., where now in 2023, one in three people is considered obese. In fact, conditions related to obesity including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer, are among the leading causes of preventable, premature death.(2) Obesity was also a factor in the number of deaths that occurred during the COVID pandemic.
Much-Needed?
Although we’ve been told repeatedly how essential meat and dairy items are in our diet, plants—with the addition of vitamin B12—truly offer us all the nutrients we need. People are usually most concerned about getting enough protein on a plant-based diet, but since all plants have some protein, it’s easy to get all you need on a totally plant-based diet. The most protein-dense plant foods include dry beans, lentils, soybeans (edamame, tofu, tempeh), and sunflower, chia, and pumpkin seeds.(3) As for needing protein for strength, the athletes in The Game Changers movie showed that you really can get all the protein you need to perform at your best with just plants. Many people also think only dairy can provide enough calcium, but a cup of fortified soy or almond milk or a cup of fortified orange juice each have the same amount of calcium (300mg) as a cup of dairy milk.(4)
One thing plants don’t have, thankfully, is cholesterol, which unfortunately, the eggs from the hens in many small farms have in abundance. Plants do have plenty of necessary fiber, though, which is missing in not just the eggs, but in all meat and dairy products.
Another big difference between a plant- and a meat-based diet involves the gases that the plants and animals emit before they even appear on a plate. Plants give off oxygen—a gas we all need in order to breathe—and they take in carbon dioxide—a gas that’s currently overheating the planet. But beef and dairy cows, and all the waste they produce, emit methane, a gas that’s heating up the planet over 20 times faster than carbon dioxide(5) over a 100-year period and is 81 times as potent as carbon dioxide in a 20-year period.(6)
Cows also eat—a lot—and will eat what they can find, including tree seedlings, bushes, and leaves. So not only are the small farmers’ cows emitting excessive unhealthy gases, but they’re also removing any small trees that could be growing larger and helping to curb the harmful CO2. Raising cows instead of plants is even more problematic in drought-stricken areas due to the excessive water usage of meat, as 1800 gallons of water are needed to produce just one pound of beef.(7)
Yet the farmer may think, “But I just have one small farm.” However, when their farm is added to their neighbors’ farms and their neighbors’ farms, etc., etc., well, it’s estimated that there are now one billion cows in the world, which accounts for 18% of the planet’s greenhouse gases.(8)
Cares About the Animals?
I do believe it when small farmers say they love their animals since they feed and care for them and depend on them for their income. But what a very strange kind of “love” it is. Because the dairy industry has done such a good job of hiding the truth, most new vegans, when first learning about how dairy farms operate, are shocked to discover that the farmers take the newborn calf away from its mother shortly after the calf is born—with some mother cows crying for days—so the farmer can get the milk from the cow and the calf can get a milk-like substitute. If the calf is male, the new vegans quickly learn where veal comes from. If the calf is female, she joins the milking herd for four or five years until she’s “spent” and is then slaughtered for hamburger meat. I used to be a vegetarian and ate dairy products because I thought I was still being kind to the cows. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Of course dairy cows aren’t the only ones who suffer. Cattle farmers have their beef cows slaughtered when they’re between 18 and 24 months old, and egg-laying hens are dispensed with at about 18 months after their egg production slows down. Pigs are killed at five to six months and turkeys at four to five months. Broiler chickens are killed at just six weeks old. All these animals are slaughtered after just living a fraction of their lives and all “because we like the taste of their flesh, and because they cannot fight back. Might does not equal right.”(9)
Generational Farms?
It’s understandable that small farmers would want to pass their farms on to their children, especially farms that have been in the family for generations. However, just because a family has been in a business for generations doesn’t mean it’s sensible or profitable or beneficial for it to continue, as families who made horse-drawn carriages or sold typewriters or grew tobacco discovered. And families in the dairy business have to face this now, as from 2003 to 2021, “the U.S. has lost more than half of its licensed dairy operations”(10) due mainly to mega-dairies taking over and consolidating the smaller dairies, but COVID and the rise in plant milks were also factors. Poultry farmers are not faring much better as, “The median net poultry farm income was $13,140 in 2018, meaning half the poultry farmers in the country earned less than this amount. And forty-five percent of U.S. farmers have a negative net income.”(11) This means that all U.S. taxpayers are having to subsidize these failing businesses. Yet the meat and dairy industries get so much more money in government subsidies than the good-for-you, kinder, more environmentally friendly fruit and vegetable groups, that prices remain low for harmful but plentiful cheeseburgers and high for nutritious but less attainable asparagus, causing the flawed, unhealthy cycle to continue.
Teaching one’s child to take over the family farm means teaching them not just how to care for the animals, but for the sake of the child’s own sanity, how not to care for them. Many children in 4-H groups in farming communities break down when they finally realize that the goat or pig or calf that they’ve been caring for so lovingly is now going to be killed and eaten. Some farmers may react to a child’s compassion toward farm animals by trying to provide the best environment possible for the animals that are in the farmer’s care. But no matter how well-cared-for the animals are, they’re all sent off to the same terrifying slaughterhouses where not only animals lose their lives:
“Working in a slaughterhouse is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. Workers are more than three times likely than workers in other industries to become injured on the clock, and there are an average of two amputations each week. An average of eight workers die each year.”(12) Imagine those odds each day when you have to go to work.
A Better Way
There might have been a day years ago when farmers could more easily justify providing animal meat to their communities as a reasonable way to make a living. Those days are long gone.
If an alien were to visit our earth now and observe our way of living and especially consider our food system, they, (as well as this author), would be completely baffled as to why we rip out, bulldoze, and burn down needed oxygen-giving trees and large vegetation while raising more and more methane-and-waste-producing, earth-warming cows; why we’re using our limited land and water resources to grow crops for farm animals—feeding our food to our food—instead of eating the healthier, more nutritious plants ourselves; why we praise traits such as being kind, humane, and fair, yet we raise billions of gentle, sentient beings—often in horrendous conditions—in order to kill them at a fraction of their lifespans in dangerous slaughterhouses because we like their taste; and why we continue to eat the flesh of these animals (in great quantities!) even though our human bodies have not evolved to be able to handle all those meat products and we often get sick and die because of it. Yes, that alien would certainly find these actions bewildering—and we should too! It’s time for a change.
To the small family farmer: It’s not time to give up farming—it’s just time to give up farming animals. It’s time for a transformation, although as one nonprofit calls it, a transfarmation. According to their site, “Transfarmation” partners with farmers to help them transition to plant production and then connects them with businesses in need of their products. It’s a true win-win—for farmers and their families, for consumers, for animals, and for the planet.”(13) The Rancher Advocacy Program, (also in the U.S.), and Farmers for Stock-Free Farming in the U.K. are also organizations that help animal farmers transition to becoming plant farmers, no longer raising and killing chickens, pigs, and cows, and instead growing popular items such as mushrooms, hemp, and organic vegetables.
And we can help these transitioned farmers and all the other plant-based farmers by really indulging in all they have to offer, from apples to zucchinis. We can help them by just tweaking our own menus a bit. Instead of once again having “the chicken,” consider trying a bean burrito with guacamole, spaghetti with chunky tomato sauce, pizza with mushrooms and caramelized onions, or some oat milk chocolate pudding. Yum!
Helping the small farmer, helping the slaughterhouse workers, helping the animals, helping ourselves, and helping the environment, starts with us. Each One Of Us. Please consider adding more plants to your plate and reducing or even eliminating the number of animals you eat. It’s time to stop the killing and start the healing. Our very world depends on it!
Thank you.
Footnotes
2. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
3. https://www.almanac.com/yes-plants-have-protein-choosing-healthy-protein-foods
5. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-many-cows-are-there-in-the-world.html
6. https://erce.energy/erceipccsixthassessment/
7. https://thekitchenknowhow.com/how-much-water-does-it-take-to-produce-one-pound-of-beef/
8. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-many-cows-are-there-in-the-world.html