Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-03-02)

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BloombergBusinessweek March 2, 2020

quantitativelyandqualitativelybetterthansmall,traditional,

family-operatedones—forconsumers,fortheenvironment,

andevenforthecows.

MikeandSueMcCloskey,thefoundersofFairOaks,are

closetoroyaltyinthedairyindustry.Mikestartedhiscareer

asa veterinarianinCaliforniaandeventuallybecamea part-

nerindairyfarmsthereandinNewMexico.Afterspend-

ingseveralyearsasthechiefexecutiveofficerofSelectMilk

ProducersInc.,oneofthelargestandmostpowerfuldairy

cooperativesinthecountry,hemovedwithSuetoIndiana

inthelate1990s.

Industrial-scaleoperationshadalreadythoroughlytrans-

formedthemeatandpoultryindustries,anddairywas

poisedtofollowsuit.Thebusinessmodelfaceda predict-

ableobstacle, however:thegeneralizedperceptionthat

large-scalefarmingwasbadforjustabouteverythingexcept

productivityandprofitability.FairOaks,theMcCloskeys

announced,woulddirectlyandtransparentlyconfrontthose

theylabeledthe“anti”activists—animal-rightsgroupsand

environmentalcampaigners.

“Thefarmwasfoundedoutofnecessitytocounterthe

veryloud,verywell-funded,andoften,verymisleadingvoices

againstmodernfarmingandanimalagricultureinparticular,”

saidSueMcCloskeyinaninterviewwithFood& Winein2018.

“Havingcomefroma non-generationalfarmingbackground”—

that’sanotherwayofsayingshedoesn’tcomefroma family

offarmers—“andgrowingupintheconsumer-centric East

Coast, I knew the ploy of these organizations.”

In an introductory video shown to tourists at Fair Oaks,

Sue is seen mingling with her “girls,” the cows. The animals

spend almost all of their time in barns or, if they’re calves,

inside small plastic hutches. To preempt the idea that they’d

rather be grazing in open pastures, the informational materi-

als emphasize that the sheltered cows are freed from the rav-

ages of wind, rain, and extreme temperatures. Tourists are

driven through a barn-turned-exhibit, where, from behind

the windows of a bus, they can watch a few hundred cows

lying hip-to-hip in metal-railed stalls. A recording playing

over the bus’s sound system assures visitors that there’s no

better place for cows to be than here, where they’re free to

eat, drink, and socialize. “They love to hang out at the drink-

ing fountain and interact with other cows in the herd,” the

recording says.

The tour also touts the environmental benefits delivered by

this style of containment. One display says an operation like

Fair Oaks uses 90% less land and 65% less water than dairy

farms once did to produce a gallon of milk. Some of that can

be attributed to selective breeding managed through artificial

insemination, and also to nutritional supplements; the aver-

age dairy cow today produces more than four times as much

milk per year as she did in 1950, and today’s most productive

heifers pump out 14 times more.

The centerpiece of the farm’s story of environmental sus-

tainability, though, is its anaerobic manure digesters—large

tanks in which waste is heated and turned and the methane

producedbytheprocessiscaptured.A typicaldairycow
producesabout 120 poundsofwasteeveryday;multiply that
by 30-odd thousand, and let your imagination fill in the details
of that picture. On the farms of old, wherecowsroamedand
grazed,manuremanagementwasn’tmuchofa problem;it
nourishedthesamegrassthecowsate.Inatypicalindustrial-
scale farm, manure is dumped into pits and lagoons, and the
resulting methane releases into the atmosphere. Because the
gas has an atmospheric impact 25 times greater than carbon
dioxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency,
it effectively accounts for 10% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emis-
sions. Dairy cattle alone are responsible for 53% of methane
emissions generated by manure, the EPA says.
Fair Oaks Farms’ four digesters help the operation reduce
its emissions while also producing compressed natural gas,
which fuels the operation’s trucks and provides electricity to
the barns. Fair Oaks casts it as an elegant solution, and the
system has been widely lauded as a model that one day could
result in a dairy with net zero carbon emissions. But some crit-
ics complain that such digesters fuel a harmful cycle. The gov-
ernment grants millions of dollars to large farms every year
to build digesters (Fair Oaks received federal and state fund-
ing for its system), which reinforces the methods that created
the problem in the first place.
Last year a Florida man named Richard Couto read about
theFairOakstouranddecidedtoflytoIndianatocheckit
out.Hewas,tosaytheleast,skepticalofthebenefitsthe
farmadvertised—Couto is founder of the Animal Recovery
Mission, or ARM,
which launches
what it calls tac-
tical missions to
expose animal cru-
elty. “I took the
Dairy Adventure
tour, and I knew
right away I was
being lied to,” he
says. “I knew it
was staged.”
Couto wanted
to see everything
that wasn’t show-
cased on the tour,
the other 90% or
so of the opera-
tion.Hiswayin,he
determined,wasthroughthelaborforce.AsinmostCAFO-
styledairies,manyofthejobsarebothlow-payingandphysi-
callydemanding—the kind often filled by immigrant laborers.
(More than half of all dairy workers in the U.S. are immigrants,
according to a 2015 study by Texas A&M University.) Couto
sentpeopletoIndianatoapplyforjobsatFairOaks,andthey
werequicklyhired.Onebeganclandestinelyfilminghisco-
DATA : U S DA workers. For nearly three months he compiled footage,

1940 2017

Share of U.S. dairy operations

by cow herd size

1-49 head

50-99 head

100-199 head

200+ head