Sustainable lawn mowers

Cutting grass. My son hates it. My other kids are so allergic they can barely walk outside during the growing season. The only reason I would ever do it is for the exercise. But God, infinitely wise, created a perfect lawnmower - the dairy cow. I had the opportunity to visit a farm that practices pasture-based dairying. Pasture farms allow the cows to graze (or "mow") the fields as their primary feed rather than giving them just corn or other silage. The tradeoffs and balances between pasture and traditional methods are interesting. The cost is quite a bit lower in pasture systems. The farm I visited had in input cost of just over $10 per hundred weight (how milk is measured), and is actually making a teeny-tiny profit every day, even in the worst price cycle since the great depression. They also mentioned that if they had a flat tire on one of the farm vehicles, the day's profit would vanish. But the lower cost has allowed them to endure.

On the farm I visited, they were averaging about 40-50 hundred weight volume per cow. This varies with the season, as it does on traditional farms. But traditional dairy farmers get in the neighborhood of 70-80 hundred weight per cow. The only problem is that the costs for traditional farmers range from $12-18 per hundred weight. Today the price farmers are paid for milk is in the $11-12 per hundred weight range, so for the most part, traditional farmers are losing big money.

So on the surface, grazing dairies seem to be a logical choice, yes? What about when you stop to consider that farmers are called on to produce more product with the same amount of resources in order to feed a hungry world? Traditional dairy farmers produce more milk per cow than ever before. If every dairy turned to pasture-based grazing, there would be a severe milk deficit, and prices could raise to the point that dairy products would only be available to the wealthy. The social justice warning meter just went off in my head, how about yours?

Sustainability encompasses more than just evnironmental justice. People are a part of the habitat, too. We need to figure out how to treat the planet and all its inhabitants in a way that respects each one of them.