Milk comes in from local farmers around the area. The furthest dairy farmer lives 4 hours away.
They test all the milk that comes in and pay the farmer based on quality. 250 colones per liter is average (about 50 cents).
Our tour guide, who was from Milwaukee, WI and went to South Division High School. SMALL WORLD. Had a nice chat with him.
Some of you may know what WHEY protein is. It is in a lot of protein shakes. It is a byproduct of the production of cheese (90% of milk in cheese production becomes WHEY). It is water, protein, and lactose. This WHEY needs to be decomposed before it can re-enter the environment, otherwise it would be a huge waste product. So the Cheese Factory feeds their WHEY to pigs and the pigs poop is fed to cows and the cows poop is filtered and released into a stream. This all happens on a semi-industrial farm. This was my first time seeing, in person, everything I have read about and everything I have seen in movies about how terrible industrial farming is. And what we saw is NOTHING (NOTHING!) compared to the farms in the US. It was depressing. It made me angry. My proffessor asked if these pigs were "happy". The woman responded, if they aren't happy, we need to feed them more antibiotics. Keeping them happy is economically efficient. Such bullshit. BULLSHIT. All I could do was take pictures... Hide behind my lens...
Then we visited the opposite. A family run farm, sustainable. Run by a man of dignity who loved where he lived, where he came from, and the land he took care of. This place made me happy. At least, it picked up my spirits a bit.
Happy cows:
Overall, it was an awesome day. Finally got to see the enemy and the answer. It was fun. A day full of emotion. A day that brought some answers.
Random photo:
1 comment:
nice set of pics. makes me hungry for bacon.
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