New York’s Plan to Limit Dairy Sizes: Here’s the Problem

In today’s post, I want to draw attention to a bill that’s being proposed in the state of New York. I’ve included a link to just one of many articles summarizing the bill for your reference, and I’m curious to hear others’ thoughts on it.

The TL:DR of the bill is this: two representatives from New York City (Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, D-Manhattan and Senator Jabari Brisport, D-Brooklyn) are proposing that the Department of Environmental Conservation should stop issuing new Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation permits for large-scale dairies.

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Behind the Bill

In New York, a CAFO permit is required for any dairy with more than 300 cows, with a large-scale permit required for operations with more than 700 cows. 

It’s important to note that this new “ban” would apply only to new permit applications, not ones that have already been issued.

First, let me start by saying I believe the bill has some good intentions. Unfortunately, as often happens in politics, those good intentions are masked by a lot of bad side effects and (likely) some big money at play influencing state politics.

I’ve written extensively about how I believe our modern agricultural system needs to move away from concentrated animal feeding operations and toward more regenerative systems of agriculture (including, but not limited to, regenerative practices like rotational grazing, solar grazing, pastured poultry, etc). I’m a firm believer that we do have enough space in the country to feed our population if we rethink our trade policies, land use practices, and so on. 

I’m also well aware of the impact that CAFOs (including those in the dairy industry) have on the environment. The dairy and beef industry have been equally criticized for their top-heavy contributions to global emissions; 37% of all methane emissions related from human activity are the direct result of livestock and agricultural practices. Converting a farm to an intensive rotational grazing system and out of a feedlot or tiestall design dramatically reduces greenhouse gas emissions while also helping to sequester carbon in the soil. 

With that said, the vast majority of New York’s dairies are not set up to be farmed in this way. While a conversion to grass-fed beef isn’t overly challenging (albeit requiring more pasture and less corn cultivation), switching to grass-fed dairy is more difficult due to the logistics surrounding milking. In simple speak, the animals need to be handled more, so more thought needs to be given to how that will happen every day.

I’m not a dairy farmer, nor will I ever be, so I don’t wish to speak out of turn here. However, my assumption is that it’s far easier to transition other systems into more regenerative ones before we start coming after dairies. 

And like everything I advocate for, I don’t believe in black and white solutions. I don’t necessarily believe that it’s always necessary for an animal to be 100% grass-fed and finished. 

Are there health benefits, both for us and for the animal, in doing so? Absolutely. Is it always economically viable, especially in a population that’s predisposed to grain-finished beef, and where corn is so heavily subsidized that grain-finishing is more prudent? Not necessarily. 

Where the Bill Falls Short

Perfection is the enemy of progress, and so I think striving to make everything 100% climate-friendly will only hamstring our efforts to be more sustainable.

Raise cattle on pasture where it makes sense and is economically viable for the farmer trying to make a living (ie, where the farmer has a market for that product and pasture to finish the cattle on). Exactly nothing in life is black and white, and if we treat it as such, we’ll find ourselves mired in a swamp of ideological arguments and get ourselves nowhere. 

This is the same argument I have for those who believe we need to be 100% fossil fuel or 100% renewable. We can have both. There is a place for both. It’s about context. 

I’m not anti-regulation, necessarily, but I am wary of regulations that are made with lofty ideation and little boots-on-the-ground evidence for what actually works. 

The biggest issue I have with this bill is that it’s grandfathering in the large CAFOs that already exist in New York, while cutting off the ability of smaller farms to get bigger (often, something that is necessary in order to squeeze a penny’s worth of profit instead of experiencing yet another loss). 

Of course, we need, as always, more context here. 

The Stats are Problematic

In this article about the proposed bill, the author interviewed Jay Matteson, agriculture coordinator for Jefferson County, who said that 95% of all dairies in New York are family-owned. We are the fourth-largest dairy state. Those numbers are accurate.

What Matteson doesn’t acknowledge, however, is how much those farms are contributing to the state’s overall production as an overall percentage. 

In other words, 95% of all farms might be family-owned, but if the 5% of non-family owned dairies is producing 80% of the state’s milk supply, then the fact that 95% of those farms are small and family owned is meaningless (please note that’s not the actual number, just an example to illustrate my point). 

Statistics about current average numbers of cows on New York’s dairies are also meaningless; in other words, saying that the average dairy has 1233 cows (the latest number I could find) doesn’t say much about the real size of our farms because there are some very, very large farms with four times that number that could be skewing the averages. 

Over the last few decades, the number of dairy cattle in New York has remained roughly the same, although the number of individual farms has plummeted. This suggests that many small farms have folded and sold their herds to larger businesses or consolidated with other family farms. We may have just as many cows, but they’re owned by fewer people, and I think that’s one of the problems the bill is trying to solve.

Of the 5% of New York farms that are not family-owned, the rest are owned by large corporations (albeit it’s important to note that a farm can be family-owned and still a corporation, since the latter is merely a business structure and says nothing about how the farm is financed, managed, etc) from out of state. 

The number that I most desperately wanted to find, and that is suspiciously hard to find, is how much of the state’s overall milk production is generated by that 5%. If anybody is able to locate that information, I would love to see it and include it here. 

Stop With the One-Sized-Fits-All Solutions

The bigger point is that there are so many different factors at play here, and this is a complex issue that’s not going to be solved by limiting upward mobility or expansion for smaller farms. 

Now, here’s my hot take: the bill that’s being proposed isn’t an “attack by the Democrats to get rid of family farms,” nor is it a “Liberal attempt to squash small-town agriculture and rural economies.” Both of these are variations of things I’ve seen floated around on social media over the last few days. Despite what both of our political parties would have you believe, I don’t think either party is necessarily “out to get us” as their constituents are based on some radical ideology.

However, I do think big money is at play that influences a lot of these decisions, and that’s entirely non-partisan. 

If you think carefully about this bill and, namely, about the fact that the new permitting regulations wouldn’t apply to the CAFOs already doing business, it smells a little bit like an effort to force out competition under the guise of eco-consciousness. 

If a smaller dairy no longer has the opportunity to expand, it’s stuck at the status quo while costs rise and market prices drop. The existing CAFOs, meanwhile, can continue getting larger as “For Sale” signs continue appearing on the front lawns of New York state’s farmhouses. 

The bill, of course, would never be passed if New York’s largest dairy farms were forced to downsize. 

And this is where we need to tread very, very carefully. Efforts to protect the environment should be encouraged and lauded, but they shouldn’t require us to read the fine print to make sure they’re truly equitable. 

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