Why don't we all just bite the hand that feeds us?

[Guest guest]

Oh, no, I forgot to warn you, this is a terrible place to whine about raw milk

prices. I have never seen over-priced local raw milk. In my travels across the

country and in communication with other chapter leaders of the WAPF I see

enlightened urban/suburban folks driving hours to get the opportunity to pay up

to $14/gallon of good milk. Even at that, it's a health bargain! A food bargain.

An earth-saving bargain. A cow health bargain. A farmer-saving bargain. That

$10-14/gallon price is about what farmers who make honest milk truly need to

make to stay in business. I see some of our local, raw, organic, seasonal,

farm-bottled dairy farmers trying to survive these cruel times by offering their

precious, delicious and wholesome milk for as low as $6-10/gallon.

With bulk commodity milk prices, even for bulk organic milk, hitting the skids

(again!) there is extreme and justified fear across the spectrum of conventional

dairy farmers. Thousands of strapped, abused and worked-to-the-bone small dairy

farms are going under every year across the country. Industrial Factory Farms

(the champions of both cheap, toxic, allergenic and dangerous milk as well as

" plantation " immigrant labor) engineer their lagoon-waste-moated, 10,000 cow

" dairies " to pick up the slack, and the sleepy-eyed, cell phone-addled

supermarket shoppers don't even notice!

Farmers who make this commercial milk have been squeezed for decades thus

forcing 99% of them to turn to the Dark Side, breeding genetic freaks with 100#

udders (!) and A2 casein, feeding ethanol waste, pushing the cows with " hot "

rations, milking too long, jerking baby calves off their mothers on Day One,

using GMO (cheap) grain, and then drugging the mastitic, metritic and sick,

overworked beasts with antibiotics and other drugs just so they remain strong

enough to drag their bony carcasses into the milking parlor, these days being

worked over (more and more by robotic milkers) two and even three times a day,

and then being forced into doing it year-round! That still wasn't enough so the

back-to-the-wall dairy farmers begged Monsanto to inject their cows with

artificial hormone to extract even more of the cheap, white toxic liquid before

the cow fell over dead in her stall.

Urbanites who don't know anything (or don't want to know anything) about the

daily toll of dead dairy cows being tractor-dragged out of their stall with a

chain around their ankle, want to extend their cheapskate Walmart mentality onto

the few, brave and noble organic, grass-based, sustainable dairy farmers who

struggle daily to keep the farm alive as well as the attempt to maintain a shred

of their pastorial morality and agrarian integrity. Many are now risking

punishment by attempting to go around the industry-protectionistic and idiotic

laws by selling raw dairy products direct to consumers in order to capture a bit

more of the consumer dollar. The same cheapskate, me-me-me mentality that opened

the door in America to a plague of Industrial Food is now trying to destroy what

may be the very best thing about American Farming, the independent farmer who

loves the land, refuses to be cruel to his or her animals and who truly wants to

make food that gives the rest of us health, good cheer and the strength to do

the right thing. So, here's to you, cheap foodists: Ye shall reap what ye have

sown.

Will Winter

Traditional Foods MN Buying Club

302 W 61st St, Minneapolis, 55419

www.traditionalfoodsmn.com