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Seven percent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.
If you do the math, that works out to 16.4 million misinformed, milk-drinking people. The equivalent of the population of Pennsylvania (and then some!) does not know that chocolate milk is milk, cocoa and sugar.
[...] For decades, observers in agriculture, nutrition and education have griped that many Americans are basically agriculturally illiterate. They don't know where food is grown, how it gets to stores — or even, in the case of chocolate milk, what's in it.
[...] Upton and other educators are quick to caution that these conclusions don't apply across the board. Studies have shown that people who live in agricultural communities tend to know a bit more about where their food comes from, as do people with higher education levels and household incomes.
[...] In some ways, this ignorance is perfectly logical. The writer and historian Ann Vileisis has argued that it developed in lockstep with the industrial food system.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:15AM (8 children)
Yup.
I've had people, apparently intelligent people, ask me where duck eggs come from - like from special chickens? Lord knows what they'd have thought if I'd given them an emu or ostrich egg.
I had one woman who confidently asserted that she had no problem with dairy, but could never eat veal. When I gently, patiently explained to her that veal is a byproduct of the dairy industry, I unleashed horrified realisation on her. The simple idea that milk = lactating cattle = calves = surplus calves = veal had just never crossed her mind.
I had someone demand that I farm according to vegan rules. How I farm without any functional pest management strategy (even IPM involves keeping livestock, please note - usually poultry) was never clarified.
And on, and on ... I could write a book called Dumb Shit City Folk Say.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:22AM (3 children)
Go on?
I am /technically/ a farmer.
I have just about 1.5 acres of garden, a bit under 2000 acres of woodlot, and 400 acres of blueberries. Also, I have chickens - but they're assholes. I also didn't invite them. They come from the neighbor's farm and decided to live on my lawn. I built them a house and call them my refugee chickens - it's a long story and, trust me, you don't want to get me started.
Seriously., tell me some more shit city folk say. I promise to giggle at the appropriate times. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:29PM (2 children)
Your refugee chickens do make me curious.
As for more dumb shit city folk say?
I recall the one who warned me that my having farmland on a slope meant that all the nutrients would be leached out of it by runoff rainwater. He was totally unable to explain the existence of 100 foot trees on my property in light of that.
Then the fellow who asserted that farming is stupid work for stupid people, and when I started to explain how modern farming is very far removed from what his great-grandpappy did just shut it all down with handwaving about Monsanto and the Devil Frankenfood.
Speaking of devils and evil, there was one (actually, come to think of it, more than one over the years) who intimated that I was evil for driving a truck. And got very offended when I pointed out that even if you fit their rinky-dink grocery getters with towbars, they couldn't credibly haul what I haul, where I haul it. And even then, burning more fuel for multiple round trips.
Then of course the usual self-righteous vegan screaming (well, maybe more screeching than screaming) about how I'd never eat meat if I had to kill the animals myself. No shit, that really got thrown in my face. I invited that one to come to our personal use slaughter day.
Along the same lines as the foregoing: "Don't you feel like a cannibal?" No. No, I really don't.
Or the one who wanted me to get rid of all my guns because ... some poorly articulated political reasoning about baby-killing. But was avowedly just fine with my hunting invasive pests with a longbow and broadheads.
I could go on, but the stupid burns. I need to go wash it off my synapses with some coffee.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:25PM
The closest I get to that is going down to the lake to watch the tourists wreck their boats and trucks while they try to navigate the boat ramp.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:33PM
Has a toddler ever killed someone with a longbow?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:10AM (3 children)
Calves could be grown before slaughter. That would make them normal beef, not veal.
Vegan farming is easy enough. Use a greenhouse. Use doors and air filters to keep out the pests. Done carefully, this also eliminates fungus and other pathogens. If you do the red/blue LED lighting, you can choose a harvest date that will bring a high price.
The duck eggs from chickens are more difficult. I don't know what counts. You could print "DUCK" on them and/or incorporate as a business called "Duck". You could create a breed of chicken called "duck", or perhaps a breed of duck called "chicken". A little GMO work might help. You could also just jam duck eggs into chicken butts, then soon afterward have duck eggs come from chickens.
It works for chocolate milk too. Some dairy cows are in fact brown. Use those. If you want it 1-step, try a cocoa IV. If cows won't tolerate a cocoa IV, maybe a bit of GMO work will get you chocolate milk.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:13AM (1 child)
A chicken butt is a multipurpose hole called a cloaca.
There will be a quiz.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:29PM
My turtles have the same thing!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:48PM
"Calves could be grown before slaughter. That would make them normal beef, not veal."
This is true. However, it depends upon a wide range of factors, such as how big is the beef raising market this year? It fluctuates like a whiplash.
"Vegan farming is easy enough. Use a greenhouse. Use doors and air filters to keep out the pests. Done carefully, this also eliminates fungus and other pathogens. If you do the red/blue LED lighting, you can choose a harvest date that will bring a high price."
Sure. You can do this. Just a few things to point out:
First is capital costs. I actually considered a greenhouse operation, and it is incredibly expensive. Bearing in mind that your truly hermetically sealed greenhouse (because you don't want soil-borne pathogens and pests in your vegan greenhouse) will need a good, load-bearing floor (probably a concrete pad), and double glazing (because otherwise the heating costs will kill you) with integrated ventilation systems and decontamination zones in airlock style doors, plus decontamination for the growth medium, the costs become stupidly high. The ROI is insane. And that's not even counting maintenance.
Next, pollen. If your plants are wind-pollinated, it's a bit easier (although either labour or energy intensive) but if they aren't self-pollinating (which many crops are not) you're going to have people running around with brushes manually pollinating flowers. The more valuable crops require cross-pollination, more often than not, especially for a good yield.
Next, labour. Do you have any idea what kind of labour is involved in managing that sort of crop? Unless you're running a gigantic Caterpillar or John Deere across a field, it's utterly back-breaking stoop labour of the worst kind. Never mind the insurance load for dozens of people wielding razor-sharp sickles, their wages will be incredibly high. You'll price yourself right out of the market trying to keep that up.
Next up, environmental load. Because let's not pretend, even if you got the greenhouses donated, volunteer labour on some kind of vegan CSA basis, and free NPK inputs because you have compromising pictures of important people, that any of this resembles a sustainable approach. You can't even handwave about fish ponds, because vegans don't do fish captivity, or mason bees because lots of vegans won't even eat honey (I know, that one's controversial, but you're basically halving your market there). But let's ignore all that. You're sucking down energy faster than Al Gore's jet, on land that is no longer available to wild growth or animals, and annihilating microorganisms in large batches, and even then you STILL have to transport inputs, crops and people back and forth to keep your thing going.
But yeah, sure. Vegan farming's totally a thing.