On a dairy farm in rural Eyota, Minnesota, a day-
old calf wobbled up to a robotic feeding stall. An
RFID reader scanned the tag clipped to the calf ’s
ear and measured the amount of milk allotted to
the baby as she drank from the feeder.
In just a generation or two, farmers have
embraced high-tech advances in their fields
and barns.
But those advances led to a sharp increase in
production in the midst of a trade war with
two of the U.S.’s largest dairy export markets.
That has left many American farms awash with
excess product with no one to sell it to. But the
economy of scale has kept some larger dairy
producers afloat.