Dairy Farming in the 21st Century: Global Ethics, Environment and Politics

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How do we achieve food security for a global population now over 7 billion people and trending towards 10 billion by 2050 This study of the global dairy industry examines how to balance our needs with those of animals and the environment. It scrutinises ruminant bovines worrying exhaling of methane, a greenhouse gas which, fortunately, evidence shows can be reduced by adding seaweed to cattle feed. Are the multi-thousand-cow mega-dairies of the USA appropriate models for Africa and Asia's high-growth dairy regions, where so many women are smallholders Is it ethical to keep cows in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), eating unnatural high-energy/low fibre diets when they prefer grazing pasture Other issues include hormones for oestrus stimulation, and GMOs for milk yield, stressing cows' immune systems and drastically shortening longevity. This book offers multifaceted discussion of the central and ancillary issues relevant to dairying, and consumption of plant- and laboratory-based foods in the 21st century. No book to date offers such a comprehensive overview, linking ethics, environment, health and policy-making with in-depth coverage of the major dairy farming regions of the world.

Reviews

In this volume Bruce Scholten brings together his long-standing research on dairying from around the world, making a unique and ground-breaking contribution to agri-food studies and agricultural geography. It is informed with an ambitious and critical approach to a wide range of literatures and empirical investigations. In particular, it blends ethical, political and environmental debates and perspectives, dealing with both production and consumption relations. It is a must read for a wide range of scholars and practitioners interested in the conceptual and material cross-roads global dairying now finds itself. * Terry Marsden, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning, Sustainable Places Research Institute and School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, UK *
Bruce Scholtens volume is an important contribution to the question of sustainable dairy farming. He thoroughly interrogates the ethical dimension of production, and demonstrates how ethics, the environment and political factors shape the face of the industry. The book uses evidence and fact in a rounded way and includes academic work as well as the observations of practitioners. As an aside, Scholten offers a valuable critique of how evidence is created and valued and the devaluation of expert knowledge and the subsequent costs. I particularly enjoyed his interrogation of the gendered nature of farming practice, a theme that is often overlooked when agriculture is seen as a sector rather than an occupation. This book is a delight to read; it is witty, engaging, and very clever. * Sally Shortall (PhD), Duke of Northumberland Professor of Rural Economy, Newcastle University, UK. Lead author, 2017 Scottish Government Report on Women in Farming *
As professor, researcher and mentor-cum-supervisor of university graduate students researching smallholder dairy development, including policies and climate change, over four decades, I have not come across a book that examines the political, ethical and environmental factors influencing dairy development in one volume like this. Writing on India's White Revolution, and the East Africa Dairy Development project (EADD), Bruce A. Scholten, promotes sustainability and nutrition security, showing how village cooperatives, cold chains and technical assistance can empower women's income and family nutrition. We will see if more digestible feed, and additives such as seaweed, can enhance womens participation while reducing ruminant methane which exacerbates global warming. * Stephen Gichovi Mbogoh (PhD), International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Nairobi, Kenya *
This book provides extremely significant insights into environmental and social concerns related to the future of dairy farming in the Global North and South. Its engagement with key ethical debates and foregrounding of farming communities is outstanding, especially its abiding concern with animal welfare and insights into womens roles in dairy farming. Given concerns around livestock and methane emissions, Scholten's exceptionally valuable and timely perspectives will engage both a specialist audience and those more broadly interested in sustainable and just solutions to global warming and food insecurity. * Pratyusha Basu (PhD), University of Texas at El Paso, author of Villages, Women, and the Success of Dairy Cooperatives in India: Making Place for Rural Development *
In Chapter 5 Bruce Scholten highlights the importance of women farmers for international food security and sustainable development. Using the metaphor of the grass ceiling, he examines obstacles to womens success as farmers and the gendered economic disparities between men and women. Womens organizations and cooperatives, the growth of alternative food networks, organic production and organic certification policies provide the means for some women to break through the grass ceiling. Scholten explains how the Grass Ceiling differs among nations in accordance with geography, social structures and norms, government policy and consumer preferences. * Lucy Jarosz (PhD), Professor Emerita, Department of Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, USA *
'Dairy farming has become dominated by markets and investors, beyond control of family-scale farmers who get their hands dirty and break a sweat for a living. Bruce Scholten understands, both analytically from his academic background, and with his roots on the farm, that there is an intrinsic relationship between a herd of cows and a family, and between cows and cropland where their waste is recycled to enrich soil instead of becoming a concentrated pollutant. He articulates how eliminating these connections exploits people, animals and the environment, resulting in nutritionally-inferior food. * Mark A. Kastel, Executive Director, OrganicEye; co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, US advocates for family-scale pasture dairying *

Author Bio

Bruce A. Scholten has written for publications such as Hoard's Dairyman USA, VDI-Nachrichten Germany, and Governance Now India since 1988, and has belonged to the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists since 1998. He was Honorary Research Fellow at Durham University's Geography Department 2009-18. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and was Editor of its Rural Geography Research Group RGRG Newsletter 2009-21. He is the author of academic journal pieces including in Food Policy, Human Geography, and the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, and books including U.S. Organic Dairy Politics: Animals, Pasture, People, and Agribusiness (2014) and Indias White Revolution: Operation Flood, Food Aid and Development (2010).