A Grim Parable of the Modern Food System

18,000 cows went up in smoke but will we learn our lesson?

Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur on Unsplash

Last week, news came in from Texas about an explosion — and an unusual explosion at that. Normally, explosions that hit the headlines are the result of terrorist attacks, war, or those which have caused human death – but not this one. No, this event was different, very different. For in this absurd event, it was 18,000 dairy cows on a huge factory farm who met a gruesome and explosive end.

This story captured the public’s attention and provoked a plethora of questions. Many were along the lines of “How could/did this happen?” – the usual suite of questions asked after such an odd event. One question though stood out. This was when someone asked, “What kind of a farm keeps 18,000 cows under one roof?” Whereas all the other questions remained at the surface level of analysis, asking about the dynamics of what happened (and perhaps betraying a gruesome schoolboy fascination with the fact that 18,000 cows “exploded”) a question like this got to the heart of the issue as it started to ask normative questions: not “how could this happen?” but “how could we let this happen?”. In asking what kind of farm…, the question implied there are two types of farm: one ‘Good’ and another ‘Bad’ and we can place the 18,000-cow mega factory farm squarely in the Bad Farm category. Perhaps we could even place it in a third category — an evil farm — a gross perversity that should not exist. 

The uncomfortable truth we all must, though, reckon with is that this kind of farm is more common than we tell ourselves. The idyllic picture-perfect farm of our children's books that we kid ourselves is normal is, in fact, a rare oasis of a ‘Good Farm’ among the expansive and barren ‘Bad Farm’ desert that covers our landscapes (even our supposedly “green and pleasant” ones). Ultimately what this tragic event did was blow the cover off our modern food system and the illusions about it that we held to reveal the hidden ‘factory farm industrial complex’ and associated perversions that underpin much of what we consume. We are thus forced to confront the stark reality of the pitiful state of many of our farms and the perversion behind our desires for cheap food.

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The emergence and subsequent market dominance of the factory farm is inseparably intertwined with modernity’s infatuation with efficiency. The factory farm may be a monstrosity that should under no circumstances exist, but it is the inevitable end goal of a society transfixed upon the twin idols of efficiency and economic growth. The aim of the factory farm is to not though just be efficient, but hyper-efficient and by carbon-copying the principles of the industrial factory and applying them to the farm environment, the factory farm has achieved efficiency on a monumental and inhumane scale. The principles that the factory farm has commandeered include the removal of dead time (no need to gather the cows from the field in this set-up); energy efficiency (preventing cows from moving means more energy is invested in producing milk or meat); hyper-simplification of a normally complex and resilient system; continuous/seemingly limitless production; and intensive input-output cycles (pump high-energy grain in, extract milk out — all over a relatively small spatial area). Judged by simple¹ measures of efficiency, the system works incredibly well. It pumps out milk and meat to our shops and into our fridges at a phenomenal rate and does so seamlessly and cheaply — which is said to be good for the consumer and an unquestionable bonus for business.

As all “good” MBAs will indoctrinate, efficiency often leads to huge profits. This comes through economies-of-scale, time-, labour-, and energy-saving all helping to drastically lower the costs of production — which, when coupled with huge demand, leads to rich rewards. There are other big winners too. The sheer volume of food produced by the factory farm complex has flooded humanity with cheap abundant food. In one sense this is laudable — global rates of poverty have dramatically declined in recent times (although factory farming is not solely or even largely responsible for this). However, the sinister side of cheap abundance has been the concentration of power in the agricultural sector in the hands of the mega-corporations (Big-Ag) and a list of injustices that dwarf the length of “War and Peace”. 

But this is something we are all too ready to overlook. Cheap abundant food has become the expected and demanded norm in society. We all hate to spend heavily on food, and our governments have cannily realised that keeping food prices low is highly desirable for when elections come calling. Cheap food is also seen as one of the primary fuels for economic growth by feeding hungry workers and freeing up disposable income which can be spent on the latest gadgets, machines, or entertainment. Cheap food has thus become a “societal good”, an entrenched norm, and a political rallying cry. No wonder Earl Butz proclaimed to farmers decades ago that fateful clarion call: “Get big or get out”. The implicit message to small farmers was “You are in the way, stifling progress, are an economic bad, and are a disservice to society”. Make way for the big (factory) farms! 

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Farmers who wish to keep on farming well (of whom there are many) struggle to cope in the free-market free-for-all, caused by Butzian agricultural doctrine and the emergence and dominance of the factory farms, their lobbyists, Big-Ag corporations, and supporting governments. Small farms are either clobbered and undercut by cheap imports with lax standards flooding the market or they are pressed down by supermarkets in their price wars or pressed into toxic contracts with Big-Ag. It is a race to the bottom – of standards, virtues, and rock-bottom prices. Depopulation of our rural spaces has ensued, and Good farmers (as I have argued are almost always small farm farmers by virtue of natural limitations) have been driven to the brink of extinction.