Second of four parts
The previous part is at thevoice.us/examination-of-farming-today-cows-and-climate-change
Public-owned BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) offered an interesting article by Emily Kasriel. She asked how dairy farmers in the United Kingdom see the role of their industry in climate change and finds a mixture of doubt, denial, and commitment to change.
“As I listen to Hannah and her family, I try to be completely present, using deep listening. I focus on their words, but try to sense the meaning behind them to better understand their world view. The theory behind deep listening, first explored by psychologist Carl Rogers in the 1950s, is that you convey the attitude that ‘I respect your thoughts, and even if I don’t agree with them I know that they are valid for you’. When a speaker feels they are being deeply heard they are more likely to convey a richer, more authentic narrative.
“I sense a conflict between the family’s shared world view, a deep love and connection with the environment and the animals they tend, and to the possibility that dairy farming could be harming the planet. ‘I think [climate change] is a lot to do with cars and aeroplanes,’ said Hannah’s brother, David. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with farming as we look after the wildlife and the environment… We are not out to damage things.’ The experience and family history of being dairy farmers is critical to the family’s identity, so an idea that appears to threaten that heart-felt identity is hard to embrace.
“I come to understand that Hannah’s love for the cows, and desire to do everything she can for animal welfare, is the prism through which she sees the world, including climate change. Whenever we talk about a potential measure to reduce carbon footprint or methane emissions, her immediate thoughts are whether the cows will benefit.
“After we reach the main farmhouse, her Labrador, Marley, leads us to Hannah’s boss, Philip Davies, who denies that climate change is happening.
‘”Climate change is the biggest load of tosh. It’s lies beyond lies,’ he said, leaning his arm on the corner of his concrete cowshed, scanning his pregnant cows lying down on the straw inside. ‘When I was at school not far from here, some of the boys ordered chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. When the books arrived, the headmaster, who used to deliver the post (mail) to us boys every morning, would throw them into your porridge. I feel the same about climate change.’
“Philip is a tall man who stands erect with piercing blue eyes; he has been a dairy farmer for more than five decades. ‘I was born a dairy farmer milking a cow when I was six or seven. I remember that first cow, Sylvia, in that farm just down the road, and my father and grandfather before him,’ he said. Each precious cow in his herd has a number, and a name. Mabel, Beryl, Megan, Antoinette, Estelle: Names that have echoed through the family herd since the 1950s. Last year, Philip and his three brothers invited 150 neighbours, friends, and those they do business with to a marquee to share a meal of meat pies, and bread and butter pudding, listening to stories of their grandparents to celebrate the century their family has been milking cows.
“As I hear more from Philip about his experience of farming, a pattern begins to emerge of periodic catastrophes that have shaped his history. ‘I remember foot-and-mouth disease in the late 1960s,’ he recalled. ‘I was at school, it was the start of October, and I went to play sports. I could see fires all the way from Manchester with the cows burning.’ Philip then tells me about the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak – better known as ‘mad cow disease’ when he lost 30 cows overall. He vividly remembers the day the vet condemned three of his cows in one day, putting them down in his yard. ‘It was a tragedy,’ he says. After BSE, there has come a drive to reduce tuberculosis levels in cattle. “It changed from something we lived with to a massive issue,” he said, his voice filled with frustration and sadness.
‘“Farmers are the most optimistic people I know, but scratch under the surface, we are carrying disappointment and anger:’ Philip Davies.
“Philip feels that cattle farmers have a raw deal. It’s toughest on the youngsters like Hannah. Philip is keenly aware of how hard Hannah works, not only with the cows but in masterminding all the paperwork. He said he would love her to have a more secure future in dairy farming, in which the price of milk would reflect the extraordinary hours and hard toil she pours into the job.
“On the second day of my trip to the farm, I awake early to walk in the surrounding fields, to try and make sense of Philip’s outlook, one that rejects humanity’s huge contribution to the warming of the planet as well as the significant emissions caused by dairy farming. The dry, yellow, corn is thigh high, and the morning mist hangs heavy, prescient of another intensely hot day. The wide landscape gives me a sense of perspective, and an insight into Philip’s ‘deep story’. I sense the pride he feels about the intensity of his lifetime of labour alongside a disappointment about the lack of respect that such toil is given and a fear when he looks to the future.
“Philip is uncertain whether he can sell his cows and retire in the coming years without his farm being clean of tuberculosis. He feels powerless that he’s forced to send cows who test positive for tuberculosis to be slaughtered, when he has no faith in the validity of the test, though research shows that the rate of false positives for a skin test is around one in 5,000. While on the surface tuberculosis tests have nothing to do with the evidence for climate change, I sense a wider distrust of scientific authority connecting the two.
‘”We feel voiceless and weighted down,” Philip said. ‘Farmers are the most optimistic people I know, but scratch under the surface, we are carrying disappointment and anger. We’ve been silenced by everyone pointing the fingers at us. ‘You naughty people, you are ruining the planet.'”
Continued at thevoice.us/a-balance-dairy-farming-climate-change-animal-welfare