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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Some commentators here have difficulty of understanding how small farming can be profitable. It's relatively easy to explain.

They are not selling just the product. Just like microbreweries, small farms sell for people who want more than just a beer or lettuce. They want to distinguish themselves and buy the feeling of authentic life and values. Consumer pays more for "small farm" even if the product is not any different from neighboring farm product that is not marketing itself as "small farm".

Modern consumer marketing sells identity, lifestyle, and values. There is no reason why small farm products can't create value from association and self–identification just like Pepsi is not selling sugar water or Nike is not selling sneakers. Everything that is sold using words classic, authentic, natural, original can be more expensive for segment who wants those tings.

Traditional farmers who produce standard grain or milk in bulk quantities are selling for different market segment.

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> They want to distinguish themselves and buy the feeling of authentic life and values.

More than this, I think there is a substantial portion of consumers who aren't as much attempting to distinguish themselves as they are realizing how important their dollar vote is.

Buying from a small or local farm keeps money circulating locally (ideally). When there is a community of local businesses, this becomes amplified.

It's the primary reason why the whole "farm to table" concept with restaurants caught on. By choosing to eat at a diner that gets their eggs from a local farm, rather than, say, buying a breakfast sandwich from McDonalds, you're not only supporting the local restaurant, but also the local farmer.

So while there is certainly an appeal (not exclusively, either) to purchasing something labeled as classic, authentic, natural or original, there's a less selfish reasoning tied to the root of it.

An interesting part of this is the way primarily Liberal-metro local/organic movements have been ignored as a common ground, and even mocked as purely an aesthetic, by the "anti-globalists".

There's at least a third explanation as well, which is the fact that eggs from farmer Tom down the road are likely to taste 1000x better than the egg-inspired food product in a McGriddle.

I can't imagine many people are thinking "Screw local farmers, I want Tyson Chicken Nuggets!". That might be a bad example but the point is that cost is probably the bigger factor here, not politics or lifestyle or even taste.

I’m not disagreeing with the trust of your comment, but despite popular belief, McDonalds does use real eggs.[1,2] Though there’s no doubt that an egg from a chicken who has walked around, eating bits of grass and bugs, will taste better and have a better nutritional profile.

[1] https://yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca/answer/does-your-egg-mcmu... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/27/are-mcdonalds-eggs-real-fast...

It does, but only the McMuffin sandwiches really taste like it. The others use the folded egg that they get premade and frozen.

The folded eggs used to be made from fresh eggs. Did this change?

It must have, if they were. It's still made from eggs, they just make a bunch of liquid egg and then make it into these shapes and freeze them & ship to restaurants. The scrambled eggs in the big breakfast weren't frozen, though. They could made with the sort-of-real liquid egg stuff or just fresh eggs, I'm not sure.

Strange... We used to have a blender for both scrambled eggs and folded eggs. Crack the eggs in, blend them smooth as silk and Bob's your uncle.

Eggs are insanely cheap. I’m not sure why anyone would bother to fake them.

To economize other costs on the supply chain and to standardize quality

This plus spoilage, durability & logistics costs. (which you might be already including).

Perhaps surprisingly, fake eggs do exist.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/06/how-to-make-a-rotten-egg...

They microwave them though, eggs are good when they're cooked a in a bunch of fat with herbs and spices.

Yes, but only a small/unknown brand can successfully hide the fact that it's been cooked in a bunch of fat and properly salted/spiced. Once the brand becomes big enough, people are forced to confront the fact that the good food is good on account of being unhealthy.

>> there’s no doubt

There is very much doubt about that. Stanford (IIRC) did a study and no one could tell the difference.

i would also add to "taste" and "nutritional profile", (3) the well being of the chicken, (4) the well being of the factory workers who tend to them, and (5) the impact on the environment where the non-industrial chickens are raised. the more dimensions one considers in the multivariate optimization, the more McD's starts to lose value (geometrically, even).

You are confusing a recipe that you don't like with an ingredient that you don't like.

You seem to be implying all eggs taste the same, which is not true.

Eh, at least one test seemed to show that there wasn't a noticeable difference: http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/08/what-are-the-best-eggs-ca...

I can taste the difference.

Did you do a double blind study?

You don't have to blind a study when the effect size is big enough (the classic example is the ridiculousness of a double-blind test of the use of parachutes). See my other comment for how easily egg flavor can be altered.

He's right to be distrustful. People are terrible at taste tests. If you ask people how something tastes, they will tend to tell you what they think they're expected to taste rather than what they actually do.

There's plenty of scientific evidence for this based on wine studies[1], but on a personal level, the tongue map myth[2] is the one that gets me. It was taught in science class as true, and we did (non-blind) experiments to measure the effect, but we failed to conclude the effect didn't exist.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_wine_tasting [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map

People are terrible at taste tests.

True, but after being served backyard vs. store eggs without being told which is which, or which feed type was in use, or that anything had changed at all, and still noticing a difference, I am confident that it is possible for the flavor of eggs to vary.

There is a huge difference in taste between different types of chicken feed. The same chicken will produce thick, dark orange, bitter yolks with one type and lighter yolks with another, in both cases free to roam and eat bugs and grass.

So any taste test that doesn't find a difference between eggs isn't testing the right eggs.

There's a massive difference in taste, and an objective measure that correlates well with this - namely, the thickness of the collagen sheath just underneath the shell (eggs being single cells.) It's an excellent correlate of the overall health and nutritional value of the egg. If the egg can't even protect itself from breakage well, the rest of the egg isn't ideal, either.

>There's a massive difference in taste

You feel that way, but all evidence says otherwise.

>and an objective measure that correlates well with this - namely, the thickness of the collagen sheath just underneath the shell

Measuring that is objective, but there is no evidence it correlates with taste at all.

>(eggs being single cells.)

I honestly don't know how to say this nicely. You expect people to take your pseudo-scientific nonsense seriously when posting things like this that clearly show you don't know the most basic facts on the subject? A bird egg is not a single cell. The ovum is a single cell, and is a tiny spec on the surface of the yolk. The yolk, the white and the membranes are all not part of the single cell ovum.

>It's an excellent correlate of the overall health and nutritional value of the egg.

Show us the evidence. That is an easily proven objective claim, so where's the evidence?

> The yolk, the white and the membranes are all not part of the single cell ovum.

Do these contribute additional cells to the egg that must be counted?

Next you'll be saying that all carrots taste the same. Or wheat (my grandfather was an elevator operator - it doesn't at all according to his account, due principally to local soil conditions - different geology.)

Science isn't whatever meets your expectations. While the egg isn't functioning as one big working cell, it's not made of cells, it is what became of just one cell. More here if you want the discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ry2ug/are_chick...

As for what healthy eggs looked like, I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on a farm. The fragile, rather sickly eggs you're so used to buying now were unknown on farms fifty years ago, when I was younger.

> better than the egg-inspired food product in a McGriddle.

People always use this as an insult, but how cool would it be if fast/processed food providers had actually found a way to make eggs/chicken/beef/etc artificially? It's been an area of active research with decades of failed attempts to show for it. Achieving fast-food level quality would be a huge step forward.

Egg synthysizers exist and they're shaped exactly like chickens.

Now do it without a nervous system that can experience suffering

and without losing 90% (or was it 99%?) of the input energy to heat.

I think egg production by chickens is actually more efficient than that. If I'm reading Figure 1 in the following link correctly, it looks like modern farms are about 17% efficient for calories of food fed to the chickens to calories of eggs produced: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/10...

For comparison (from the same figure) pork is 9%, chickens raised for meat are 13%, cow production of milk is 17%, and cows raised for beef are 3% efficient.

The secret to fast-food "quality" is the same as any other restaurant: fat, sugar and salt.

+1 for "food product". i use that more accurate term frequently.

It seems to me that there's a small fraction of people who are into this stuff that are really doing this thoughtfully and for the right reasons, and that the majority really are either pursuing an aesthetic or using this or other social causes as sort of a prop or a distraction. I suppose this could vary based on where you're at, but I've met few people in the Midwest who were into this stuff that were not shallow and/or neurotic.

At the same time, that's an incredibly stupid argument to use to dismiss what is being done. The positive effects you mention happen regardless of the motivation of the individuals, and the people that start these trends seem to be the ones who really care.

Questions to someone with more economics knowledge than me:

I understand the sentiment and intuitive reasoning behind this argument (I find myself thinking it every week when I go to the local farmers' market!), but is there evidence that "buying local" actually increases the local standard of living?

And a followup: if it does increase the local standard of living, would this behavior, if duplicated in all communities in the world, increase the average standard of living in the world?

Some conflicting (and probably all wrong) intuitions I have for different sides of these questions:

Pro local:

The notion of keeping money circulating locally makes sense. If money is a sort of proxy for productivity, then money leaving the community is productivity leaving the community.

Anti local:

If I pay more for Local Larry's eggs and Down-the-road Dave's cabbage (etc.), then to maintain my standard of living at a constant level, I have to charge more for whatever service I provide the community. And recursively, everyone else has to as well. It seems like, at best, we just wind up at the same standard of living we started at (and at worst, lower).

Pro local:

If money is a proxy for productivity, and buying non-local means trading productivity to some large corporation in exchange for some good or service, and that corporation will disproportionately funnel that money to the already-wealthy who can afford to save that money (productivity) for a rainy day, then we have effectively contributed to removing productivity from the economy.

A good argument is the question what happens with the money.

For example, assume Facebook replaces a local competitor. Now instead of the profit going to owners, which spend it locally, on philanthropic projects, or just high quality goods, instead it goes to Mark Zuckerberg, who spends it in the US, on US brands, and to fund US charities, in best case.

If you currently live outside the US, outside SV and NYC, you’d very likely gain an advantage if everyone would buy local. The skyscrapers of NYC, and the philanthropic projects in these regions of the US, are funded with money that was extracted all over the globe, but will probably never leave the US again.

You need to see a layer deeper than that. The opportunity cost of the tens of thousands of highly qualifies engineers required to build and run dozens of national/regional Facebooks rather than doing something else is absolutely huge.

Free software can help with that. In my past two jobs, I've worked with a business platform which we adapt for our clients by developing custom modules, and there's a decent community of small companies from over the world which sell mostly to their internal markets but share modules under Free licenses.

Of course, nobody is getting rich from this, but there are many of us making a very decent living.

It's not about that. It's about choosing not to use an existing, appropriate solution because it is not being developed and run locally. There can be valid regulatory or security reasons to choose that, I'm only considering the "keeping money local" argument.

My point is that you can keep money local without having to develop everything locally.

It only intuitively makes sense -- there are quite a few assumptions. The local product is typically more expensive because it's production is less efficient (if it wasn't, it would just compete with the non-local product at regular market conditions). Being less efficient means using more inputs per output, so what is the local farmers inputs, and -- crucially -- where are those inputs made? Is he using his not-locally-made tractor less efficiently? Is he paying a mortgage to a non-local financial institution? Is he sourcing his feed, seeds, fertilizer, fuel etc locally? And of his profit, how much of it is he spending locally?

These are difficult numbers to work out exactly, but it's not difficult to see that they have to be in a pretty thigh range for your local-premium to actually, on the net, drain resources from the community, compared to you just eating cheaper meals a bit more frequently. The main type of input that most obviously support the local community is labor, and most modern products, particularly agriculturally, are rather light on labor, so you might end up supporting one job at the farm in favor of three jobs at the diner. Especially if the farm-job is held by a "highly educated, ex-urban, first-time farmer" and the diner-jobs by single moms, it's getting morally quite dubious.

But to wrap this up, local to non-local is rarely apples to apples. Just as with organic, there's probably a very substantial overlap with meeting a demand for products that are simply better (and thus more expensive), with the nominal quality (local, organic) actually being secondary.

> The local product is typically more expensive because it's production is less efficient

I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I think you're leaving out some details.

We know that other non-local products can be made cheaper because they are in localities that are lax on labor laws and environmental protection.

So the notion that it's simply about efficiency is in my opinion a bit reductionistic. As an example, to make my point... I would use a different word than "efficiency" to describe someone who uses slave-labor to push costs down.

So when buying local, at least you know which standards the producers are held to. It's the same with Bio/Organic/Free-trade products.

For the purposes of this discussion, tax is a cost like any other, and subject to the same considerations: Where and on what is that money then spent? If it's spent on a Halliburton-produced armoured vehicle for the local police departments war on drugs, you and the community are probably better off buying non-local from a low-tax locality.

Not in terms of just cost. In can be more efficient in terms of pollution too

http://getmoreeducation.org/Content/Modules/Module1/1_Coley_... https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/07/25/organic-vs-con...

> We know that other non-local products can be made cheaper because they are in localities that are lax on labor laws and environmental protection.

That can be a factor, but simply making things in bulk is a huge efficiency gain even with the exact same worker/environment protection.

And on top of that you have transportation efficiency to take into account. A remote farm can send full trailers of product to a distribution center, which then sends full trailers carrying multiple products to stores. A local farm can't send a full trailer of apples to a local store, it has to do much less efficient things.

It's not always advantageous to be efficient, and this is even more true in really important areas like food supply, because having the extra, underutilized capacity can save you in a pinch. When it comes to frivolous things like computers and phones and cars, it's much easier to favor efficiency,because the breakdowns can be really problematic, but still less immediately endangering.

Evolution is perhaps the best example of how being inefficient can be hugely beneficial in the long term.

Only specific types of inefficiency represent underutilized capacity. And I don't see how local food shipping qualifies. If anything the distribution-center model makes it easier to reallocate resources toward food supply, because they already have lots of trucks available that typically don't carry food.

By comparison, "just-in-time" shipping is an example where the efficiency removes those margins. But that's orthogonal to how far the food ships. You can have similar-sized buffers either way.

I'm going to just try a couple analogies because I suspect my argument won't come through if I try to explain or use examples. It seems like one interpretation of complex distribution networks is that they form a strong web that can flex and even have fibers break while still maintaining the cohesion and function of the whole. On the other hand, if that web actually turns out to have long dependencies, it could rapidly deteriorate, which is what concerns me.

I suppose that it's true about the large numbers of trucks, but wouldn't those only be reallocated to the detriment of providing other goods? And what happens to all our excess flexibility if severe oil shortages come to pass? Looking closer to the origin,the centralized model leaves us more susceptible to local droughts and floods (because everyone's produce comes from Salinas and watsonville), infectious diseases in livestock herds, and fungus that can cripple the entire crop of a particular fruit (because we've reduced the number of varieties by nine tenths or ninety nine hundredths.)

> On the other hand, if that web actually turns out to have long dependencies, it could rapidly deteriorate, which is what concerns me.

I agree, but certain types of dependencies are much riskier than others.

> I suppose that it's true about the large numbers of trucks, but wouldn't those only be reallocated to the detriment of providing other goods?

Yes, but what's the detriment of emergency-increasing local shipping? Probably at least as bad.

> And what happens to all our excess flexibility if severe oil shortages come to pass?

Local shipping takes more oil in many cases.

> Looking closer to the origin,the centralized model leaves us more susceptible to local droughts and floods (because everyone's produce comes from Salinas and watsonville), infectious diseases in livestock herds

Instead of a major shortage leading to deaths in one area, while everyone else is fine, it turns into a slight supply reduction over the entire country.

> fungus that can cripple the entire crop of a particular fruit (because we've reduced the number of varieties by nine tenths or ninety nine hundredths.)

That is definitely a major problem, but is also unrelated to how far you ship. Megafarms could plant 50 kinds of tomato efficiently, if they wanted to.

The biggest efficiency is nutritional, and taste - varieties that travel very, very well trade off a lot of nutrition for that trait.

If you're buying a better product for a price you're considering fair, you're not meaningfully "buying local" - the product you prefer just happens to be locally produced (and possibly can only be locally produced).

The kind of buying local that you need campaigns to encourage people to do, is generally either more expensive or poorer quality than the non-local alternative.

Better is the whole point of buying local - the can't buy traditional varieties remotely because they don't ship well. Of course you COULD buy shabby shipping varieties locally, but that was never what Alice was about, and it would be a silly thing to do.

From the studies I have heard about, there is no measurable nutritional difference between organic and non-organic food. See https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-health-benefits-from-org...

I am unaware of such studies for small farms versus large farms.

Your parent is not talking about organic methods, but rather different varieties of crops. E.g., big red beefsteak tomatoes are popular and travel well while little heirloom varieties do not, so you are going to have access to additional, possibly more nutrative, varieties if you buy local.

This has nothing to do with "organic" anything - the conditions of breeding - but modern breeds of vegetables and fruit. There's no shortage of evidence of the difference, and the decline in vitamin content over the last many decades, in the U.S.

Gains from trade is maximized when traders specialize in their most productive work. When profit is reinvested, it raises the standard of living. - Econ 101

If for any reason, you truly value your neighbourhood chicken farmer Bob's livelihood though, there's no better means of buying Bob's well-being than giving money straight to Bob.

You would have to reimagine the idea of "a high standard of living" to include the comfort of knowing that Bob's well-being is sustained.

Of course it would be at the cost of excluding the welfare of people outside of your monkeysphere.

You might be taking spherical cows too far.

I don't know what you mean.

You are over-simplifying, he says.

Negative externalities are rarely fully accounted for with this model. If you ignore the non monetary impacts, specialization wins every time.

Pro-local: attempts to directly avoid problems of trade imbalance and wealth sequestration in imperfect markets

Anti-local: a perfectly functioning market doesn't have those problems

It's basically protectionism with all the same arguments for and against. Less economically optimal, but protects you from market malfunction and bad actors.

There's quite a lot of economics behind this for local currencies e.g. The Brixton Pound [0]. The number of times that currency gets re-used (keeps flowing in the system) is very important, that is the person you pay, uses that to pay for something else locally rather than just sticking it in their bank or sending it overseas.

Susan Steed, one of the co-founders of the Brixton Pound explains a bit more in this TEDx video [1]

[0]: http://brixtonpound.org/

[1]: https://youtu.be/l_F0xBABI7c?t=7m6s

Hell, here in Canada at least, McDonalds is trumping up that it buys it's beef locally. Same with eggs.

They may well be buying locally (as in within Canadian borders, or perhaps even within the province) but they certainly won't be buying from small individual producers for the simple reason that a small scale farmer can't supply enough beef or eggs to satisfy McDonald's consumption requirements.

For what it's worth, almost all McDonald's are franchises. If you buy a breakfast sandwich there, the money likely goes to a local owner.

some of it

came here to say exactly what you said, but you did a more elegant job of exposing the thinly-veiled cynicism of the parent-post.

i also find it ironic that in many cases of debating this issue I find that those of us who consider "organic" to be the lowest-baseline quality are literally deploying capitalist principles by voting with our dollars, even thought my foodie kin tend to be super liberal, because the opposition attempts to claim the libertarian mantle in these scenarios.

Hmm. To this unfashionable middle-aged guy, that sounds too complicated. I buy local produce simply because it often tastes better. And, I can afford to pay 50% more for better taste.

I guess you could spin it to describe it as a lifestyle choice - my boring, middle-aged lifestyle. Like, my ‘I buy costco toilet paper’ lifestyle. That seems like a stretch. Or, maybe not.

Just because some people buy local produce for lifestyle reasons doesn't mean that's the reason everyone does.

If you think it will taste better, it will... (taste is based on more than your tongue).

It’s not psychosomatic- fresh vegetables taste much better. A salad that was picked the morning of is much different.

Buying tomatoes even from wholefoods vs literally getting them freshly picked is a world of a difference. Carrots that come from Costco vs. carrots that were picked yesterday make a world of a difference. Onions look, and taste better than the ones you get in bulk. And I can go on. I've made side by side comparisons of both, and regardless of how you feel, I know personally that buying even the "organic" wholefoods variety of produce is a lot worse than freshly delivered CSA from a farm.

Look, gramps, you either fit into the box or you don't matter. Get with the program and start buying your groceries from costco or your toilet paper from apple.

Also watch "Raise the Steaks" episode of King of the Hill.

Most farmers are producing a commodity and there efficiency will win out every time over the small farmer.

But farm to table restaurants are willing to pay a premium for a steady local supply. Some people are willing to pay a premium for organic and non-GMO produce.

The small farmer is able to do something the larger farmer is unable or unwilling to do and receives a much higher price for it.

Small farms are exploding in Detroit. But they're having a problem getting title to the land they're farming.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-30/black-farmers-detroit...

For those who are interested in the topic, i just finished reading this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3109.The_Omnivore_s_Dile.... The author follows the ingredients of a meal he makes all the way back to the farms. He seems to romanticize certain notions of naturally grown foods and at other times, is given to polemic against the agriculturally industrial complex (quite justifiably at times). The book itself was a lesson in the history of agriculture, nutrition, politics, policy, cooking, animal husbandry and the organic food industry. There is a part of the book where he talks about the huge industrial setup behind organic food and tries to distinguish it from the vicissitudes of the small scale farmers life. He even turns into a hunter gatherer for a little to experience life as it was before agriculture. It was a totally fascinating read and i recommend it.

Thanks. Working link to the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3109.The_Omnivore_s_Dile...

I pay ten dollars a gallon for fresh non pasteurized milk from a local family that has seven cows. I don't buy a lifestyle from them, I buy fucking good milk from animals that are loved like family, and I'm proud to be helping them make a living doing something that is good for everyone(including the cows). It's not a lifestyle, it's just supporting people who aren't shitting on everyone's future.

Keep telling yourself that

You've been posting only comments that break the guidelines. Could you please stop? We ban accounts that continue like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> it's just supporting people who aren't shitting on everyone's future.

If all dairy cows were treated exactly the same as the cows you're getting milk from, would milk be sufficiently plentiful and affordable for everyone to be able to get milk?

If you really want something that's better for cows and the environment, why not just drink soy milk (or any of a pretty big variety of milk that doesn't come from cows)?

And what happens to cows, as a species, a few decades from now?

I don't fully understand what you're asking. Could you clarify? Are you suggesting they might go extinct? Or something else?

Not the above poster, but relevant SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3105

I can see how that mom in the comic would be a supporter of bullfighting - they tend to use similar justifications around the idea that, if it wasn't because the bull was raised and taken care (to ultimatelly be killed in the sports), it wouldn't have existed at all. I say that's BS, if you ask me.

There is more than one question I am asking -

(1). Is there any scientifically sound study proving that the quality of protein from plant sources is equivalent to or better than from dairy products?

(2). Is there any reproducible, quantitative data on leaving milk producing cows to fend for themselves vs caring for them in small -to- mid size "cow caring" setups (farms, one-cow ops etc.)? I ask this because both my maternal and paternal grandparents had 1 to 3 milk producing cows at any given point in time - from what I recall, they were well cared for (food, medicine, weather etc.)

(3). If we, as a species, were to stop consuming dairy products today, or cut consumption by, say 90% over the next year, what would become of the current cow population? How is that better than the current situation for the animals?

I am personally, utterly and deeply biased towards the survive-and-let-survive school of life --- so take what I say colored by my very, very, un-apologetically biased PoV.

If you are interested in these questions I think it will be worth it to spend some time and do a bit of research, no?

You can look up Peter Singer and Yuval Noah Harari to start with and read what they have written about this. I mention them because they write well and mainly stick to scientifically supported ideas.

I haven't decided where I stand on the issues yet, but with a little research it has become apparent that you can have a very healthy diet without any protein form animals.

I've also discovered that more and more philosophers, ethicists, biologists etc, are starting to make the argument that our factory farming of animals may be the the worst crime in human history.

Thanks for the pointers on where to start looking. This is helpful.

The modern “factory farming” is not something I care to defend for any intent or purpose. It may as well disappear tomorrow, as far as I am concerned.

However, I still see no argument against deeply caring domestication of a small number/herd of animals, providing them food, shelter and care in exchange for milk or unfertilized eggs. Can’t seem to find a convincing argument against that in my current ethics framework.

Cows as a species are probably as safe as humans. Plenty other cases to worry about, assuming it’s feasible to fight extinction on a per-species basis.

Is everyone supposed to be able to buy gallons of milk and pounds of meat with the money they ear from less than a day's work? What's right? Who decides?

I don't see how it's controversial to say that we should strive for a world and economy where people can easily afford healthy food for themselves. I already suggested that the best route is probably to avoid cows altogether for this, and I didn't say anything about pounds of meat.

I have the feeling that this is controversial because it plays with guilt feelings and people, in general, don't want to be the bad guys and rationalize bad decisions polarizing the opposite field. This is reflected in the vegan cliché.

It might go deeper. Many societies are not that far away from hunger and poverty in the past.

I can see memories of hunger and war in our collective behaviour and also shaping my family, and wealth including being able to afford to eat whatever whenever cushions that a bit. In Europe, the grandparent generation that grew up with the war and the following hunger years is still alive.

Is that legal? In Canada I'm not sure your allowed to sell unpasteurised milk.

Similar laws in the US, some places in my state label it as something not to be consumed by humans to get around the laws. I forget what the labels say exactly.

People forget we pasteurize for a reason.

you don't have the eqvielent of green top milk like we have in the UK ie a herd that has much stricter regulation and testing?

In the UK you can only buy unpasteurised milk direct from a farm, not from a shop.

The answer is it depends and it's complicated, as raw milk is actually fairly highly regulated. The FDA has laws that prohibit the sale of raw milk across state borders. State laws vary, obviously. In some states it is legal and can be found in stores on shelves, in some states it is legal and can only be sold on the farm, and in some states it is illegal to sell. And, of course, those state laws can be superseded by local laws. You really have to put a little effort in to reading the local and state regulations in each area to sort it out.

I feel that if I was going to buy raw milk from a very small scale operation that I would want to personally see their operation. You have to ensure that the farmers milking are really paying attention to what they're doing. I've had some particularly nasty food poisoning in my life, one instance of which landed me in the ER and had me on a quasi quarantine watch by the county CDC, in fact, and so I don't really play around with my food too much. Milk is a tough one because a healthy cow can become a sick cow overnight. It's also made more challenging by the daily goings-ons with the milking process.

Having said all of that, my wife and I buy raw milk from a mid-scale creamery in Los Angeles, near where my wife grew up, whenever we are in the area. I've never really had much concern over it, because this creamery has been in operation for many decades and is quite reputable, but we are also well aware of the risk.

It's not legal to sell it in a store but there's no problem buying directly from the source.

At least that's how it worked in new Hampshire about 10 years ago.

It is a problem buying it directly from the source:

http://torontosun.com/news/provincial/raw-milk-dairy-farmer-...

Source goes to jail.

Blanket statements like this are not helpful, every single jurisdiction has very different laws.

An state level overview is here: http://www.realrawmilkfacts.com/raw-milk-regulations but certain local jurisdictions within each state may further limit sales.

In Canada you go to jail for selling unpasteurized milk.

http://torontosun.com/news/provincial/raw-milk-dairy-farmer-...

Canada is an extreme example though, we don't even come close to being a free country.

>I don't buy a lifestyle from them, I buy fucking good milk from animals that are loved like family, and I'm proud to be helping them make a living doing something that is good for everyone(including the cows). It's not a lifestyle, it's just supporting people who aren't shitting on everyone's future.

The things you say here seem like you are ABSOLUTELY buying a lifestyle here. ie. values for how animals should be treated, values for supporting families and values for "not shitting on everyones future" are very much lifestyle choices imo.

Partially agree.

2 things though:

- taste. The difference is real

- and while I think this is a lifestyle thing I'd say that word has different connotations

I think you are wrong here as you are mistaking lifestyle with principles and ideals. Lifestyle is something very different than principles and ideals. Strange that you don't see the difference...

> Lifestyle is something very different than principles and ideals.

Are you leading a lifestyle that goes contrary to your ideals and principles? Isn't that a rather depressing and dishonest way to live? Why would you want to live like that?

Sure, not everybody can "afford" to live by the ideals/principles they ascribed to, depending on what these might be, but that's not a choice by those people, it's a choice made for them by their circumstances.

If they had an actual free choice, I'm pretty certain the vast majority of people would prefer a lifestyle matching their principles and ideals, instead of being stuck in a place where they have to throw their principles and ideals overboard just to get along.

> Strange that you don't see the difference.

Even stranger that you didn't try to explain that difference, which leaves the rest of us wondering what you are actually trying to allude to.

"Even stranger that you didn't try to explain that difference, which leaves the rest of us wondering what you are actually trying to allude to."

I've found that many people now seem to prefer 'ill just be snarky to my fellow man with zero content whatsoever' as their primary means of communication unfortunately. :(

I think he means that he is buying "the cow's lifestyle", instead of his.

I applaud the sentiment, but do small farm cows, loved like they are part of the family actually do less damage to the environment? Is factory farming doing something that makes factory cows produce more methane?

I also disagree he is not buying a lifestyle for himself. Non pasteurized milk is ABSOLUTELY better tasting. So he is purchasing a luxury item, which is the definition of lifestyle buying. It may be ethical, and but its still tasty.

You might also find yourself buying tuberculosis with your milk, but that's your choice.

'I applaud the sentiment, but do small farm cows, loved like they are part of the family actually do less damage to the environment? Is factory farming doing something that makes factory cows produce more methane?'

Why does it matter? If both methods do equal damage to the environment and one doesnt torture animals, I still see the one that doesnt torture animals as superior.

"Is factory farming doing something that makes factory cows produce more methane?"

Unequivocally yes,by increasing the number of cows as a result of their being more affordable.

"Lifestyle choice" implies a frivolous or even capricious choice in many contexts.

Personally, the notion that we're taking a chicken raised in conditions "bad" for the chicken and for the quality of the product is just offensive and bad for everyone in the economic chain, save the big company. In a farming environment managed by a modern day tenant farmer, shipping it to China or some place in South Dakota to be butchered by exploited immigrants, and shipping it back in a cryovac to save $1.50/lb.

Or I can pay a little more, an amount that is negligible in my budget, for a bird raised, slaughtered and packed within 50 miles of my home, by farmers who are working for themselves, by a butcher whose work isn't going to debilitate him and leave him in poverty later, and a retailer in my city who is a part of my community.

This is one of these areas where I agree with the conservative ideal of markets picking winners and losers, which never works out in practice. When you consider how we destroyed regional vegetable industries by having the government spend billions to turn the California desert into an eden of industrial agriculture, or how we allowed nasty people to transform cattle ranching and butchering from solid middle class professions to a feudal/industrial nightmare with trillions of externalized costs, it's just awful. It's not how the market should work.

Buuuut Ethics is a lifestyle choice...

If you believe that consumers are rational actors in a free market you indeed need to rationalise behaviour like "not buying the cheapest/best possible thing".

If your theory cannot explain a behaviour you can add an imaginary product called "lifestyle" to the equation and stick with your flawed theory.

Lifestyle is your interests, opinions, and behaviour.

Words you are using: proud , helping, doing good, supporting. These are all values that form the basis for your lifestyle.

ps. non-pasteurized milk aka raw milk is not healthier and it's less safe. It's organic-natural consumer fad.

Might tastes different / better though?

I do know that I like non-homogenized milk better. (But that's a different process.)

To me it tastes better; maybe it's what i'm used to but I find pasteurized milk quite horrible. Maybe it's just taste and other people love the taste of pasteurized. Never met those people, but that says nothing either. Raw milk cheese is also a lot nicer in my opinion.

Have you done a blind test, if not whatever you are saying is meaningless

Why are you calling a random person's milk preferences meaningless? They just like raw milk. It's not a big deal. I like pink lady apples. Do I need to do a blind test to confirm that? No, I don't.

I gave you the reason why I am calling it meaningless. What part did you not understand.

> Do I need to do a blind test to confirm that?

Why not, go ahead, you might be surprised with the result.

I said that it means nothing so I agree. But you wanted to be snarky anyway which is your right ;)

You say you don't buy for lifestyle reasons but then go on to describe lifestyle reasons for your purchase:

"animals that are loved like family"

"helping [small farmers] make a living doing something that is good for everyone"

"supporting people who aren't shitting on everyone's future."

These are all lifestyle choices. You make your purchase not just because of the product but because of your identity, feelings, and values. If there were an identical product produced by a big company using factory farming methods it would be less appealing to you. That's not a bad thing and I don't make a judgment about it, everyone has lifestyle reasons for some of their purchases, it's just a fact.

Just like how probably half (or more) of the beer I consume is from the brewery down the street. If they are releasing a new beer I'm going to be there, either on release day or the day after if I'm busy. This is not only because the beer is good, the prices are on par with similar beers, and the location convenient but:

-I like supporting local independently owned business. I believe that to be virtuous in and of itself.

-The owners and staff are really nice and they all know me by name.

-The owners and brewer take time to come up front and say hi and chat when they see me. We talk about what's new in life.

-Their presence helps keep my property value high and my neighborhood characteristic.

My purchase makes me feel good and feel like I'm helping a friend out rather than just consuming a product I enjoy.

If those lifestyle factors weren't there I'd probably vary my purchases more and buy their beer only a couple times a year.

> These are all lifestyle choices. You make your purchase not just because of the product but because of your identity, feelings, and values.

I think it's the other way around. A product can have such good marketing that it gives the illusion of identity, feelings, and values - for example, fair trade coffee.

So what? That's irrelevant, it doesn't matter.

The purchase is still made at least partly because of the purchaser's identity, feelings, and values. It doesn't matter if the traits in question are all marketing or objective.

I think the grandparent point was about buying commodity goods from not just any seller but a seller who's values aligns with theirs.

What you talked about is the whole point of good marketing -- to allow people who are not already customers make the connection to products they should be buying.

As someone who grew up on a farm: yes, there is a real difference in taste between fresh milk and processed milk.

IIRC My dad told me it was more about the homogenization part than a the pasteurization part (which is good because it means you can get milk that tastes well totally without risk.)

That said: I'd drink fresh unprocessed milk again without hesitation as long as I know the farmer.

As someone who spent his summers getting fresh milk (often still warm) from a nearby farm, and pasteurized milk the rest of the year, I can't say I ever tasted much of a difference.

That's a lifestyle.

"Buying a lifestyle" sounds bad because it's associated with big brands for which that's just a marketing tactic, and where the lifestyle is artificial. But you're actually - and proudly - supporting an authentic lifestyle, there's nothing bad in that.

Amen, brother. I pay $5/gallon for a family farm to deliver milk to my house, and have been since 2006. People think that we're nuts for doing this, then they have the milk or the yogurt I make with it.

It's helped my in my efforts to lose weight an improve my family's health. When you pay more for better product, whether it be milk or chicken or beef or vegetables, you eat less and utilize it more. Instead of seeking bulk, we chase flavor and quality.

> When you pay more for better product, whether it be milk or chicken or beef or vegetables, you eat less and utilize it more.

That strategy works equally well for any product, not just "better" product.

The problem is identifying the better products. Price alone doesn't work.

In my case, I'll go for volume if satisfaction with the product isn't there.

How is it good for the cows? If you want cows that are "loved like family", then please explain how milking a cow is worse than a human woman getting (well, being forced into) a job as a milk producer? (Which goes far beyond "wet nursing" in terms of milk production)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_nurse#/media/File:Wet_Nurs...

> then please explain how milking a cow is worse than a human woman getting (well, being forced into) a job as a milk producer?

It isn't about the cow, it is about the babies those cows must have to be able to lactate. They are chained up or crated and then killed.

Reading most of the replies here reminds me the gun debate. It’s one side that has experience with said subject and the other side that has zero. And they argue.

Some posters don’t believe there is any difference between eggs from a small farm where the chickens roam the yard eating naturally and Tyson sized operations where they are all cooped in a mountain together.

Ethics of the two approaches aside I grew up in a small farm town in Kansas. I’ve eaten eggs straight out of the chicken my entire life. They not only taste better they last longer too. I can take freshly laid eggs and put them in a dark coolish place like my basement on a shelf and they will last well over a month. Do that with store bought eggs. I dare you

Another example is raw milk. If you’ve ever had raw milk and then bought store bought milk it’s shocking how different in taste, mouth feel, and richness there is. Raw milk is flavorful, slightly off white from the grass diet, rich from a lot of cream and if you compare that to milk at the store which is watery, chalk colored, sweetened with sugar, and lacks any cream.

It’s night and day. One is healthy for you the other is watered down, profit maximized chalk water.

There is a big difference in veg as well. So for those posters to say there is no real difference clearly have never eaten on a farm. There is a noticeable and large difference in quality, taste, smell, longevity, and nutrition between small farm non gmo and organic produce and dairy and store bought garbage.

> can take freshly laid eggs and put them in a dark coolish place like my basement on a shelf and they will last well over a month. Do that with store bought eggs. I dare you

The only reason this is true is that commercial eggs in the US are typically washed, which removes the protective impermeable membrane that both covers the egg and makes it look a little icky. In many jurisdictions is is a legal requirement.

In Europe/pretty much anywhere else in the world there are stacks of factory produced eggs sitting out on the floor/counter.

Anywhere else in the world would take your dare any time since that's exactly what they currently do :)

> There is a big difference in veg as well. So for those posters to say there is no real difference clearly have never eaten on a farm.

Grew up on/around farms as well. My parents are organic vegetable farmers.

Blind taste tests prove the difference is highly variable. Some items (tomatoes in particular) are quite obvious, other items you can tell no difference.

>milk at the store which is watery, chalk colored, sweetened with sugar, and lacks any cream.

Isn't that because milk at the store has been homogenized?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brucellosis

I'm with you. My family in Japan is living extremely countryside. Most of the immediate friends are farmers for generations. So we get access to fresh eggs, strawberries, blueberries, onions, and milk on a quality level that is off the charts. Their products never end up in supermarkets. Still they exist. Is it a lifestyle choice? It yes, it is not an active one.

>>animals that are loved like family

What about the calves that are taken away from their mothers (and mothers that have their calves taken from them) for that fucking good milk?

This reminds me of what an operator of a small, high end, boutique winery told me: "we sell a lifestyle"

If/when the economy has a major hiccup all those sellers of "distinguished" goods will have a very hard time because people will pay their mortgages first even if that means drinking PBR and eating GMO grown frozen broccoli. The upper middle class aren't a very stable or loyal set of customers.

And at the very opposite end the big retails create their own brands that sound traditional and farm-ish while the food is purely industrial.

I buy at the farmer market because it's great to know the people who produce the food I eat.

Farmers markets are ripe with the same deception

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/deception-at-the-f...

http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fable/far...

Large corporations introduce massive negative externalities (Walmart employees are on welfare, sugar industry hides and fakes scientific research, advertising). If you contribute to small, local businesses, it's very easy to hold them accountable if they do something bad (they don't have the protection of corrupt governments, for example).

I think you're wrong.

Look up Justin Rhodes on YouTube or Joel Salatin.

Small holding is profitable once you get over the hump and get customers

So if I switch from drinking Racer 5 to drinking Budweiser I won't be able to tell the difference?

You'd only tell the difference if it was Guinness http://isomorphismes.faith/post/54831080606/perception-is-re...

Any developers have aquaponics systems setup? I've been thinking of doing this.

Lots of exciting things going on in this space. There is also an Open Source Movement that came out of the MiT Media Lab, called OpenAg (https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/ove...) which has created a platform for folks like our company, Open Agriculture Supply (https://www.openagriculturesupply.com/) to create "Food Computers" which are climate controlled boxes that grow food for you indoors. All open source, all on the same platform. The future of farming is indoors, distributed, hyper local, and vertical. Also check out the book that started it all "The Vertical Farm" by Dr. Dickson Despommier.

I'm talking about a different space.

A closed loop farming ecosystem where plants filter water and fish fertilize plants. There's a lot piping and artificial structure to facilitate this type of environment but the control system is largely self regulating, there is less need for a computer to intervene, although it wouldn't hurt.

See: http://homeaquaponicssystem.com/basics/hydroponics-vs-aquapo...

In my research, aquaponics is the most nutrient dense farming system available. My eventual goal is to produce a farming system that can live on a single typical suburban property, function with minimal care and produce enough yield to feed a single family. That's right, Fish and veggies on my plate from my farm, daily.

The openAg platform seems great, however to make it fit with aquaponics it would need pH control system and a separate tank for fish.

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