Bill Schubart’s guest editorial in the Aug. 21 edition was rife with untruths, and shows his obvious lack of knowledge about the people and businesses he attacks. To bury my letter in back pages would be journalistic miscarriage.

I’m not sure what bothers me most, that the Addison Independent would give Mr. Schubart the megaphone of a guest editorial to attack hard working local families in our community, or that Mr. Schubart somehow thinks he knows and understands anything about Vermont dairy farming. There is so much to debunk and correct in his opinion piece that it’s hard to know where to start. 

I have worked in the Vermont and New England dairy industry all my life. First as a young man working on dairy farms, then as an employee of local agricultural companies and in the last 20 years before retirement as an independent dairy consultant across New England. I know something about dairy farming.

I know of no farms in Addison County or in Vermont that are corporate farms. All the ones I know of [and I know most of them] are family farms with multiple generations of family working on them. I challenge Mr. Schubart to name a farm in Addison County that isn’t operated daily by the owners with the owners putting in 10-15 hours a day of work.

Furthermore, Mr. Schubart blithely slips in, almost as an afterthought, oh yes if we should go to this different model of milk production that he proposes, food would be more expensive. Oh great, food is already more expensive than a lot of people can afford. That’s why the food shelf usage in Middlebury is growing by double digits yearly.

I am always amazed by people who have knowledge in one area, let minor success go to their head, and become experts in everything. Mr. Schubart is evidently a writer of some sort. One bio I read says he writes fiction. That certainly doesn’t make him a dairy farm expert or an expert in facts.

Now let’s get to the facts. Why do farmers get bigger? It has been my experience backed up by meetings with dairy farmers, farm lenders and farm financial experts, that farmers get bigger for several reasons. One is to bring more family members into the business and provide everyone with a livable wage. Another reason is to spread their costs over more units of production [cows] and increase their income. I find troubling that too often, non-farmers seem to think farmers should behave differently than other businessmen or should be satisfied with lower income just because they are farmers. That they should take less income or not have the same benefits that technology provides the rest of us non-farmers. The bottom line is that they get bigger for the same reasons that all businesses get bigger in our system that rewards businesspeople for good management and growth.

Another fact. The overwhelming majority of the release of microplastic from tires into the environment comes from tire wear and tear as we all drive around in our comfortable high-tech cars. This part of Mr. Schubart’s column is so spurious, he is obviously piling on.

Let’s now look at Mr. Schubart’s description of current dairy farming practices. There are no 2,400 cow herds that milk their cows robotically in the state let alone Addison County. Robotic milking barns are expensive and used by smaller to midsize farms to save labor. Another advantage to robotic milking barns is that the cow chooses not only when to lie down, when to eat, when to drink, but also when to get milked.

Cows do not live in 30- to 40-square-foot pens. Cows on modern dairy farms live in barns called free stalls where they are — as the name implies — free to lie down when they choose, in stalls most often cushioned with mattresses, get up and drink or eat when they choose. They are milked three times a day, by people who are taught to handle the cows quietly and gently. They are brought to the milking parlor in groups, where their udder is washed and cleaned and a milking machine is applied to them by the farmer or the farm employee. Cows that are not handled humanely and gently do not give as much milk and therefore cut into the farmers’ income. So, why would any farmer mistreat his cows?

Now let’s move on to longevity. How long does a cow live? Mr. Schubart got part of his tirade correct. There are many reasons for cows leaving [culling] the herd. One of the big drivers of culling is the price the farmer gets for selling his cow for slaughter. If the price he receives for selling the cow is high, then the cow needs to be more profitable for him to keep her. Her milk production, her reproductive status [pregnant or not], her mobility, all factors into his decision on whether to keep her or not. And just as an aside. Unhealthy cows, sick or badly injured, do not get sold for meat. Slaughterhouses have strict requirements regarding what animals they will accept. How much are you willing to pay for meat? The price of meat is already very high. The number of beef cows in the country is very low. One thing that keeps beef prices from going even higher is the number of dairy cows that go into the beef supply. The price the dairy farmer receives for his culled cows from the slaughterhouse provides another source of income for dairy farmers, therefore causing them to look closely at which cows are not providing profit.

It is important to remember that these animals are not household pets. If we want to treat them as household pets, the cost to society would be huge. Imagine the cost of keeping a nonproductive animal around for years, as it lives out its life. And then what would you do with it when it dies? Bury it? Cremate it? Sounds like a good source of pollution to me. The idea sounds good in a column, but it’s not realistic. Dairy products and meat would be so expensive to produce that we would basically all be forced into being vegans. Maybe that’s what Mr. Schubart wants? Mr. Schubart would have one sector of society, farmers, be second-class citizens, and not benefit from growth or technology. Benefits that I’m sure he enjoys every day.

Gardner Merriam
New Haven