Dairy is the farm, milk is the product. As to pollution and land use factory farms will always cause pollution because they squeeze too many animals into an area smaller then they can live in healthily for profitability. (Cows for example need 2 acres per cow in lush lands or 50 acres per cow arid lands).
As for chickens. In my opinion as long as you have at least two chickens (they are social animals), maintain them properly, protect them from predation, keep up with vet visits/vaccinations, and let your chickens out to forage, they are a wonderful addition to a neighborhood. But make sure you read up on egg safety, especially if you plan to share your eggs.
But milk has it’s own “farm” section too, so that doesn’t make sense. It would make more sense to get rid of milk and cheese sections and combine them with dairy herd, but then that stat doesn’t make sense because it seems it would be way higher than the beef herd.
See how they specified “beef” dairy herd. They are talking only about the livestock. The animals. The veal. The cattle they breed. The animals they cull and sell. They aren’t talking about the lactating products.
Then you have milk. The product. Lactating dairy cows have a productive phase when they are kept specifically and separately to produce milk. I know it comes off as cruel but in agriculture animals are livestock and thought of in terms of lineitems when listed out.
I hope that helps. It’s a bad graph, the creater carved out specific data points for their own personal politics which makes it hard to read. (Hence the cute notes littered around the chart). I too would have wrapped dairy cows and milk production into one line.
Dairy is the farm, milk is the product. As to pollution and land use factory farms will always cause pollution because they squeeze too many animals into an area smaller then they can live in healthily for profitability. (Cows for example need 2 acres per cow in lush lands or 50 acres per cow arid lands).
As for chickens. In my opinion as long as you have at least two chickens (they are social animals), maintain them properly, protect them from predation, keep up with vet visits/vaccinations, and let your chickens out to forage, they are a wonderful addition to a neighborhood. But make sure you read up on egg safety, especially if you plan to share your eggs.
But milk has it’s own “farm” section too, so that doesn’t make sense. It would make more sense to get rid of milk and cheese sections and combine them with dairy herd, but then that stat doesn’t make sense because it seems it would be way higher than the beef herd.
See how they specified “beef” dairy herd. They are talking only about the livestock. The animals. The veal. The cattle they breed. The animals they cull and sell. They aren’t talking about the lactating products.
Then you have milk. The product. Lactating dairy cows have a productive phase when they are kept specifically and separately to produce milk. I know it comes off as cruel but in agriculture animals are livestock and thought of in terms of lineitems when listed out.
I hope that helps. It’s a bad graph, the creater carved out specific data points for their own personal politics which makes it hard to read. (Hence the cute notes littered around the chart). I too would have wrapped dairy cows and milk production into one line.