Factory farming a model of good practice
12th December 2009
The announcement this week that dairy companies have applied for consents to house 18,000 cows in cubicles in the Mackenzie Basin has sent shock waves through the community but may be a boon to the makers of astro-turf.
One of the promoters of the scheme, Hugo Largeburger of Two Fingers Dairy Holdings, disputed claims that farming cows indoors will be bad for New Zealand’s green image.
“People are saying this is factory farming but it’s nothing of the kind. I’ve been in factories and they’re full of bloody diesel fumes and miserable looking buggers in overalls. Our farms will be elegantly designed residences that blend with the landscape. We’ll have murals on the walls showing famous dairying landscapes so the cows will feel expansive, and we’re looking into astro-turf in the cubicles to give them the idea of grass.”
Mr Largeburger claims the astro-turf is a uniquely kiwi solution to indoor dairying. “We’ll use different shades of turf to create the changes of seasons. So we’ve got green for spring and early summer, then brown as we head into the drier season and silver to create that frosty effect of winter. The cows will feel like they’re out in the wide open, except they won’t be freezing their tits off.”
Opponents argue that intensive dairying in fragile environments like the Mackenzie Basin is a sign that dairying is heading the same way as the sheep industry in the 1980s, when the national flock topped 70million and sheep were being raised on marginal land that quickly degraded and has failed to recover. Mr Largeburger will have none of this.
“When you’re dairying in cubicles there’s no such thing as marginal land. I can tell you we’ve got plans to build a heap more of these farms all the way up to Mt Cook. In fact, we can see real advantages of building a few right on the Tasman glacier. Let’s face it, that place is worthless for anything else and with global warming there’ll be no problems with water supply – at least for a few years.”
He is dismissive of claims that effluent disposal will damage the environment.
“What environment? There’s nothing there but dust and hills and the odd salmon farm. Our project will actually create an environment through careful application of nutrients to the ground.”
He also hinted that Two Fingers has several other strategies for disposing of waste.
“One plan is to build a pipeline over the Southern Alps and dispose of all the waste in a West Coast river. Environmentally we’ll be pushing shit uphill but nobody ever goes there so we should get away with it. We’ve also discussed gathering all the urine into holding tanks and releasing it into Lake Benmore during peak electricity demand. We could generate an extra megawatt or two of power and offset that against our carbon footprint.”
Cubicled cows will be fed on palm kernel sourced from Indonesian plantations owned by Two Fingers subsidiary, Dipstick Consolidated.
“Dipstick’s been knocking down rainforest for years and we’ve got a mountain of palm kernel over there. We’ll mix it with a local supplement of ground rabbit meal and hieracium, to give the milk a unique Mackenzie tang. Our techies have also discovered that the chemistry of astro-turf is very similar to palm kernel, so we could have the cows actually grazing in their cubicles.”
When asked if his plans were a triumph of corporate greed over good practice, Mr Largeburger looked puzzled.
“I suppose that depends on whether you see greed as a bad thing,” he replied.
