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A Handful of "Cooperatives" Control the US Milk Market (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/usa@lemmy.ml
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US dairy farms are consolidating, and so are their cooperatives Mergers have reduced the number of dairy co-ops from 1,930 in 1951 to just 107 in 2023, according to the most recent available data. As co-ops have grown into large, diversified businesses, some farmers say they increasingly behave like corporations rather than represent their interests, particularly those of smaller producers. Three co-ops — Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’Lakes and California Dairies — market more than 80% of U.S. milk.
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[–] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Wait till you realise that destroying capitalism necessarily means destroying the environmentally disastrous luxuries that capitalism normalises and encourages.

You think we can just get rid of capitalism and all our capitalist consumption habits would magically be hunky dory? The environment doesn't give a shit about what ideology you have as far as consequences for humanity are concerned, it gives a shit about whether you're exceeding the limits of what the system can sustain. Animal agriculture will be just as inefficient, wasteful and unsustainable under any ideology (and just as intrinsically cruel under any ideology), the most a smarter ideology than capitalism can hope to do is recognise that fact and identify it as something we should stop doing.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    There is no need to maximize human consumption calories per acre. If America's farmlands can sustainably support 300million people with a variety of foods including eggs and meat (it can), then there is no reason to eliminate the animals from that food supply just because you could support 1billion people by being more efficient. In a future communist state of America I'd write in the constitution that every man woman and child is entitled to 2lbs of domestically produced beef and 1dozen eggs a week and that attempting to undermine, sabotage or profit off that right would be criminal.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 day ago*

    The emissions alone are enough to make us miss climate targets

    To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

    (emphasis mine)

    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357

    The level of harm is an order of magnitude different. It's not quibbling over some small details

    To produce 1 kg of protein from kidney beans required approximately eighteen times less land, ten times less water, nine times less fuel, twelve times less fertilizer and ten times less pesticide in comparison to producing 1 kg of protein from beef

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25374332/

    Moreover, mandating a consumption level like that is exactly how one keeps factory farming just as entrenched as it is today

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