FULL CISTERNS, EMPTY VILLAGES

The intensification of cattle farming has occurred parallel to other phenomena without which our understanding of this process would not be possible

How's your premium? The increasingly concentrated dairy industry has played a major role in paying cattle farmers based on volume and quality bonuses.  Quality bonuses award (with a higher price per litre) the amount of fat and protein, as this represents additional possibilities for the industry (butters, creams...).  Volume bonuses mean paying more per litre to farmers that produce the most litres.  The industry justifies these premiums citing the need to guarantee supply and compensate for collection costs.  The response of small cattle farmer associations is that in Europe there is a surplus of milk (that is why maximum quotas are needed) and therefore there is no danger of shortage, and that the difference in collection costs is around 2 pesetas per litre not the 12 or 13 pesetas of the premiums.  In fact, they attribute the hidden rationale of volume bonuses to a strategy aimed at preventing livestock cooperatives from being able to negotiate and increasing profit margins.       

The search for high levels of fat and protein and large volumes contributes to encouraging intensive cattle farming, which as we have seen is unfavourable to small farm operations. If to this we add the fact that these farms, due to their small production volumes, receive a lower price per litre, their survival is that much more difficult. 

Calcium for everyone  We have been told so many times that calcium from dairy products is necessary in our diet that milk and yogurts are now consumed several times a day.  This assures high levels of demand and a widespread notion of milk as a standard product.  In Spain, 105 kg of milk and its derivatives are consumed per capita a year, more than the total of fresh fruits and double that of vegetables.1    

Agricultural policies  Both European and Spanish policies have encouraged an intensive model of large farm operations, for example, subsidizing the production of certain raw materials for feed or making it easy for large farms to absorb production quotas (the most recent measures appear to want to reverse this but their effectiveness is still unknown).  All of this is framed in a discourse that leaves out the competiveness of the small family farm.       

 

Speculation  Grazing cows do not generate sufficient economic profit to compete with cash payments from selling the pasture to a property developer for the construction of weekend chalets or vacation hotels.   

 

Social contempt towards the agriculture and livestock trade  Some of the children of cattle farmers that we met keep the profession of their parents hidden from classmates in school.  Many of the children of cattle farmers seek careers in the hotel trade or construction.

 

Productivist discourse  The concept that "more is better": big cows that produce lots of litres, big cowsheds, big tractors...  And also frequent visits to farms by sales agents from medical, feed, semen, etc. companies bearing the calling card that reads, "We have a fast and easy solution, here and now."      

"I feed" therefore I am  The expansion of the industrial production of feed is fundamental to the process of intensification.  A significant case is that of soy, which was a vegetable (rich in vegetable protein, good for increasing the production of milk in cows) unknown in the West for centuries.  Nowadays it is one of the motors of global agribusiness.  Various countries, including most notably the United States, Argentina, and Brazil, have specialized in the production and export of massive volumes of soy for the elaboration of feed.  Soy is one of the crops in which genetically modified agriculture is most developed and in which the oligopolistic concentration of multinationals is most clear.  In Spain, six million tons of genetically modified soy and corn enter the country per year, 80% of which is used in feed.2 As a result, genetically modified crops now form part of the diet of much of Spanish livestock.  The expansion of genetically modified soy presents the double threat of grave consequences in both producing and consuming countries.    

 

At the end of this process are thousands of small- and medium-size farms that abandon the sector each year, even though they keep rural areas populated; in twelve years their number has diminished by 73% while the average production quota has increased in just four years by 40%.  While the process is widespread, there is a marked difference among regions as to the degree of intensification: a medium-size farm in Valencia is 9 times bigger than a medium-size one in Galicia. 

The consequence is cattle farming that despite employing much less people, produces overall the same amount of milk as extensive farming3, although the product is of questionable quality, profitability and productivity are limited, and the ecological impact is considerable.  As such, the process of intensification becomes a cause of rural depopulation, and therefore of an imbalanced territory, as well as of poor quality food, overpopulated and unpleasant cities, and a loss of food autonomy.        

1. Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food: Panel on Food Consumption 2004. 

2. Estimates by Greenpeace; official data not available.

3. Since its entrance in the EU, Spain has produced more or less the same amount of milk, limited as it is by assigned dairy quotas.