Anyway …

Ever since I first moved to Vermont in 1981, I’ve been hearing a constant public drumbeat about the decline of Vermont’s dairy farms punctuated at times by horns of temporarily profitable prices. I would think folks would have caught on for now. You, Vermont News Guy, are absolutely correct in your statement that “Dairy farming is more important to Vermont than is Vermont to diary farming.”

Colloquial definition of insanity: continuing to do the same thing over and over while simultaneously expecting different results.

But the reason we keep acting like bovine milk farming is so important (and yes, we’re mostly talking cows … not so much goats or other milk producing ruminants) is simple. Look at the table of contents for the report referred to:

Introduction (274kb)
Section I: The Vermont Context
Chapter 1: Population (2.74MB)
Chapter 2: Environment and Climate (2.1MB)
Chapter 3: Land Use (1.98MB)
Section II: The Vermont Economy
Chapter 4: Economy (2.84MB)
Chapter 5: Affordability (1.95MB)
Chapter 6: Agriculture (1.81MB)
Chapter 7: Forestry (1.74MB)
Chapter 8: Creative Economy (1.06MB)
Section III: Infrastructure
Chapter 9: Physical and Electronic Infrastructure (1.77MB)
Chapter 10: Energy (2.65MB)
Chapter 11: Education (3.47MB)
Section IV: The Institutions
Chapter 12: Health and Health Care (1.83MB)
Chapter 13: Crime and Corrections (1.08MB)
Chapter 14: Governance, Civic Engagement and Quality of Life (2.32MB)

What got picked out for note by the News Guy? Why dairy, a subset of agriculture which is only one of 14 chapters. This is not specific to this news blog. Bovine dairies and our claimed group need to save the (going broke for decades now) industry have dominated political headlines for at least 30 years now.

Let’s kick the cow addiction and let the dairy farms go so they can be replaced by something else.