The American Dairy Coalition appears to be hot on the trail of bad government data.
We all know about bad government data, but maybe it’s especially bad where cows are concerned.
Science has established the fact that cows produce methane gas, which could be a source of profit if the capitalist system could figure out how to package it, and market it. But for the time being, the methane is simply getting released into the atmosphere, the same way other carbon-containing gases are being released. Some scientists believe these carbon-based gases, released into the air, will cause the planet to become uncomfortably warm.
Uninhabitable, even.
The American Dairy Coalition isn’t so sure about that. And they also believe the government isn’t so sure… but is acting like it’s so sure.
Global warming might be real, and the methane gas generated by cows might be part of the cause. Or maybe not?
But we know without a doubt that government arrogance is a definite problem.
And that’s not the only problem ADC has complaints about. The government, they say, is increasing the amount of information they’re demanding from the dairy industry, without being clear about who exactly gets to use that information and for what purposes.
From a recent press release:
“Farm data has value, and that value is being captured,” said Sherry Bunting, ADC Dairy Market Analysis & Policy Advisor. “Dairy farmers need to remain in control of how their proprietary business data is collected, used, shared, aggregated, and monetized. We are looking carefully at this issue, which has been raised by dairy farmers and confirmed in our recent producer survey.”
Ms. Bunting makes an interesting point. In the capitalist system, businesses typically want to hide information from their competitors. Not a great way to make friends, but maybe a great way to get rich.
Not that dairy farmers are necessarily getting rich. But they still might not want the government blabbing about how much milk they are producing, how much they are charging for it, and how much methane their cows are producing.
Cows are not cars… and ADC reminds us of that fact.
Of course, most of us realized, from a young age, that cows are not cars. Anyone who has ever tried to get milk out of a car has failed miserably.
The claims made by ADC in their “Make Cows Great Again” graphic caused me to stop and consider how the modern world works, and how I might be to blame for the situation. I’ve owned a number of vehicles over the years, and some of them added a hell of a lot of “new carbon” into the atmosphere, as could be estimated by the terrible gas mileage I got. But I foolishly believed — without any real evidence — that plants need carbon dioxide, and the more carbon dioxide I produced, the healthier the world would be.
Turns out, the plants just couldn’t keep up with me. Is that my fault, or the plants’ fault?
Meanwhile, the dairy industry was frantically recycling as much carbon as possible, by feeding their cows vast quantities of corn. Which is mostly corn starch. And corn starch contains carbon, which the corn plants extracted out of the atmosphere — although not fast enough to keep up with my poor old polluting vehicles.
Until 1851, corn starch was used primarily for starching laundry. But times change. Now we wear polyester, and cows eat the starch.
Apparently, corn starch has a chemical composition that looks like this:
I never knew that starch could be quite this complicated.
At any rate, it looks like corn starch is about 28% carbon.
For comparison, I looked up the chemical diagram for ethanol, which is also derived from corn. And it’s in my gas tank, whether I like it or not.
Two things I noticed. Ethanol is a lot less complicated. And also, the scientists are still confused about the color of atoms. Is carbon blue, or is it yellow? There doesn’t seem to be a firm agreement about this.
I always thought carbon was black. But I’m not a scientist.
According to ADC, dairy cows recycle natural carbon, while our vehicles spew (unnatural?) carbon into the atmosphere, where it accumulates. Thus, cows are better than cars. In fact, cows can be ‘Great Again’, if we can get our advertising figured out.
But wait a minute. Weren’t we talking about “methane”?
I though we were talking about “methane.”
I don’t remember the conversation being about corn starch…
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.