“What is it that we want for these beautiful and gentle animals as they help us feed a hungry world?”, asks Dr Troy Ott, professor in the Department of Animal Science at Penn State University to introduce his online lecture entitled Birth to Puberty, part of the university’s dairy production courses. Ott tries to get across the importance of ensuring farm conditions that “maximise the welfare and comfort” of cows, but I am not following him anymore. His words seem distant and unclear. 

After a moment of perplexity, I look back at my screen and, thinking out loud, say: “Dear Professor Ott, we clearly have very different understandings of what we should or in fact should not do with these truly beautiful and gentle animals and how we can manage to feed a growing world population. On top of that, dear Professor Ott, dairy is a thing of the past; the era of plant-based milk has long begun.” 

Let’s pause for a moment. To start with, why am I, a Surge team member, even taking a course on dairy production? Let’s wind back a bit to the beginning of the story. 

“I will recommend something to all of you - take the online course Dairy Production and Management by Penn State University on Coursera,” said my friend Emma during one of our weekly meetings to nerd out about farm transitions. “It might sound crazy but it will help us speak the language of animal farmers much better.” Emma’s suggestions made sense. Kind of.  

As somebody who has been vegan for more than seven years, taking a course on dairy production does sound quite contradictory, even intimidating to an extent. However, being someone who is deeply passionate about helping farmers transition away from livestock and dairy production to plant-based farming, this seemed like a very smart move. Emma is the Farm Conversation Program Manager at Miyoko’s, a plant-based cheese company based in California. She is just as passionate as me about farm transitions, and for Miyoko’s she is currently trying to find a dairy ranch that can be converted into a plant-based farm that then grows ingredients for their products. So, when during one of our weekly group meetings she suggested this free course, I signed up for it right away. 

What is this course actually about? Well, the name of the course captures the essence of it quite well. Admittedly, it is a well-structured course on dairy production and management in the US. The course includes genetics, nutrition, reproduction, animal health and common diseases, and farm economics, most of which translates well to farming in many other countries. The lessons can be considered quite objective and fact-based, for example, the anatomy of male and female cows, how cow digestion works and how artificial insemination is done - but that didn’t stop my vegan brain from wanting to dismantle them.

Two of the main questions I posed to myself throughout the whole course were when and why did we decide that we must produce dairy in this way? I would have loved to ask these questions to the professors. I would point out that they are simply explaining how cattle raising and dairy production has been done for decades, but not one of them questions the information they are regurgitating. For instance, during the male anatomy lesson, the professor mentions that “many of the techniques associated with artificial insemination were developed and refined at Penn State in the 1940s and 1950s by a famous scientist named Dr John Almquist [who] was awarded the Wolf Prize for his work, an award that many refer to as the Nobel Prize for agriculture.” This means that this technique was developed over 70 years ago. 

I am not trying to suggest that we should be using more modern techniques for insemination, but when so many other industries like the automotive or energy sector look completely different today than they did 70 years ago, why is the agricultural sector not adapting to changing trends nor becoming a true steward for the environment like with electric cars and renewable energy?

Generally, the course tutors never pose rhetorical questions to students with the aim of having us question why we do things the way we do on dairy farms and arrive at our own conclusions as to whether or not current practices actually make sense, which of course they do not.

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It was just mind-boggling to my vegan-wired brain how these academics, who are supposed to think critically, manage to make all the practices sound so morally and socially acceptable, such as casually describing heifer calves born on dairy farms as “an opportunity to maintain or increase herd size, to improve the herd genetically, or to improve economic returns to the farm” or that dairy mothers should be no more than two years old when they first give birth “to minimise heifer raising costs and to maximise their production during the first lactation”. These are just some examples showing how all the practices this course teaches are founded on the belief that cows are little more than production machines for human profit.

The phrase with which I opened this article was the one that made me think the most, and the one that prompted me to confess to the Surge team that I was taking this course. After hearing Professor Ott’s question, “what is it that we want for these beautiful and gentle animals as they help us feed a hungry world?” I had to stop the video, rewind and listen to it again.

How can this question, that once analysed sounds so wrong to my animal-loving brain, come across as so acceptable, even kind and well-intentioned? Is it the fact that it is a pretty good university, known for many other majors in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and the social sciences teaching this course? Is it the way the professors come across as so authoritative when giving their presentations? Or is it the fact that I usually associate Coursera with courses only related to nature conservation, computer science or human physiology but not agricultural courses covering topics like raising cattle and dairy production? No doubt it is a combination of all the above.

Ott also talks about mating and artificial insemination (AI) and explains why, according to him, we should use AI over natural male and female mating. His reasoning is that “a farm's ability to improve the genetics of their cow herd will be reduced if they use bulls for breeding” even though he also mentions that “bulls are generally considered to be much better at detecting heat in cows than humans are, which should be no surprise to anyone.” So, this professor clearly knows the benefits of allowing cows to breed naturally yet for the purpose of creating breeds that have higher and unnatural milk production, we have to go far beyond natural mating cycles. If humans are scared of scientists playing around with human genes, then why is it acceptable to drink milk or eat meat from animals that are a result of humans fiddling around with genes in other species?

Ott concludes that “we would like our cow to be able to complete the [below] cycle at least four to six times before we replace her in the herd with a new heifer.” How is it possible that the purpose of a beautiful and gentle animal is to be used solely for milk production and then be sold for slaughter and meat production at the end? 

At one point throughout the course, one professor quotes Dr Gordy Jones, designer of Fair Oaks Dairy in Indiana, who once asked, “should we be focusing on fixing broken cows or preventing cows from becoming broken?”. By saying this, Dr Jones means raising cows for dairy production but focusing on preventative cow health to avoid disease outbreaks. To counter, I would use the same question but add on whether we should be focusing on fixing “broken” cows or preventing cows from becoming broken in the first place by actually taking them out of the whole industry?

Ironically, Fair Oakes Farms came under intense scrutiny after an undercover investigation by Animal Recovery Mission, an animal rights organisation, revealed how farm workers were hitting newborn calves and dragging them by their ears. Whether the employees were fired as a result or not, the investigation showed us that Dr Jones’s approach to preventing “cows from becoming broken” clearly doesn’t work. 

When finishing the course, the most important question constantly ringing in my brain was why this course actually still exists. I understand that the main focus of this course comes from a business angle to teach agriculture students how to increase dairy production and economic returns, but dairy farm numbers continue to decline both in the US and the UK and more and more consumers are choosing plant-based milk, cheese, ice cream and so on. It doesn’t seem very smart to encourage agricultural students to enter dairy farming and desperately try to increase production. 

Such courses should turn towards the current dairy landscape and also talk about the fact that dairy production is decreasing and that farmers wanting to stay in the agricultural space can absolutely do so, but not by taking out loans to set up animal farms, especially concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). CAFOs are corporate livestock farms housing thousands of animals in large barns with an enormous environmental impact, mainly because of the greenhouse gas emissions and manure runoffs coming from these farms. Courses like the Dairy Production and Management course could be teaching young farmers how to adapt to changing diets and market conditions and, for example, teach or even take students to farms that have transitioned from dairy farming to plant-based farming or other income sources that leave out dairy altogether, such as solar or wind farming to sell the renewable energy to energy companies or setting up an animal sanctuary and/or B&B. To give a few examples, Jay and Katja Wilde in the UK shifted away from dairy to growing crops, amongst others, Andrea Davis in the U.S. transitioned from dairy and cheese to set up an animal sanctuary, and Urs and Leandra in Switzerland went from dairy farming to organic plant-based farming. 

Even though I did not enjoy learning about ways to increase milk production and economic returns on dairy farms, I can actually recommend the course to anybody interested in speaking the language of dairy producers or farmers in general. It also served me to better understand how farming courses perpetuate the idea that livestock farming is absolutely necessary for our society and part of a wider system that cannot exist without livestock farmers.

If you are someone who, like me, wants to get more involved in helping livestock and dairy farmers transition to more sustainable, stock-free farming, it is a good idea to take this course or a similar course. Because the main aim of the course is to teach how farmers can increase productivity and actually be profitable, by better understanding how farmers think in numbers and return on investment, we can also better engage in conversations with them about shifting from e.g. dairy to other stock-free while still being profitable.

Moreover, in order to minimise or fully eliminate the feeling of guilt and instead create a sense of responsibility and honour in the farming community, those taking the course learn how to breed their animals, manage their herds, and treat diseases, all masked as strategies to take proper care of the animals so that better animal health can lead to more and high-quality milk. Thus, if as a vegan community we want to help farmers get out of livestock farming, farm transition efforts also have to create a sense of worth for farmers, pride even, by letting them know that plant-based products can be of high quality and value and are necessary to feed the growing population in a sustainable way.
I am now thinking of taking a similar course on poultry farming since there is enormous potential to turn those huge poultry facilities into hemp farms or other kinds of vertical farms that can produce vegetables or mushrooms for sale as fresh produce or to supply plant-based meat companies. Vertical farming companies are already eying up former animal barns to convert into vertical vegetable farms.

• For more information on farm transition, download the Surge Information Pack For Farmers.  

While I wouldn't argue that we should forgive farmers for what they're choosing to do, a lot of them are born into the farming life and until someone speaks to them, it’s the only reality they know. And so it is on us as activists and campaigners to speak their language, not for them, but for the sake of the animals. Understanding that farmers have families and have the same desires, fears and core motivations as anyone is very important for effective outreach.

It is up to you to decide how you want to learn more about farming and farmer language, but I believe that in order to take cows and other animals out of the farming industry, a part of the vegan movement has to work with and not against farmers to help them transition.

Tatiana von Rheinbaben is a global citizen who finished her master's degree in environmental engineering and science at Stanford University in June 2018, after having studied molecular biology (B.S.) at the University of California, San Diego. After an internship at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and an internship at The Not Company in Chile, Tatiana started working for Surge and for Refarm'd, a startup helping farmers transition from animal agriculture to plant-based milk production and stock-free farming.

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