IT has been reported that recently in some parts of north China dairy farmers have been dumping milk or killing and selling cows.

These drastic moves, already observed in Beijing and in Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi and Jiangsu provinces, intend to cut the losses due to falling milk prices. Some dairy farmers also took these measures to show their anger over some dairy companies’ failure to honor their purchasing contracts. Whatever the real motivations, the very image of pure milk going down the drain caught our imagination. Unlike in some Western countries where milk can be cheaply available, in most parts of China milk has not been one of the staples, and has always been a highly valued tonic more proper for people in need of fortification.

When I first brought up this milk-dumping case to my 12-year-old son, he immediately thought of the milk-dumping practiced by moribund American capitalists during the Great Depression in the 1930s. That’s also a stereotype image easily evoked for any Chinese of average education, as the case has been much cited in depicting the evils of capitalism.

Singularly, this milk-dumping image remains strikingly vivid in the otherwise quite prosaic, preachifying textbook. But in the wake of this milk dumping in our socialist nation, some professors have been busy explaining why the milk is not the same as that dumped into the Mississippi River.

Beyond isms

According to some, milk dumping in capitalism reflects contradictions between socialized production and private ownership inherent in capitalism, and signals the onset of an economic crisis. In socialism, it’s just about an imperfect market where supply and demand need to be balanced.

But even if we confine our discussion to the technicalities, outside the now quite delicate distinction between the isms, the Western mode of production probably still holds the key to understanding the plight confronting our dairy farmers.

As Philip Lymbery and Isabel Oakeshott warn in their seminal book “Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat,” don’t be fooled by bucolic images and folk tales about modern farming; modern farming happens indoors.

Billions of chickens, pigs and cows live cheek by jowl in cramped, horrific conditions. They are pumped full of antibiotics, or fed grains and other food that could sustain billions of people. Industrialized farming poisons the oceans, the air and the soil — all for no gain except the astonishing gain in production efficiency. “In the land of the mega-dairy ... humans, cattle and the environment are dancing to a grim tune of extraction and depletion. Each is just an asset to be milked dry,” the book reads.

Cheaper imports

The key to understanding the plight of the Chinese dairy farmers is that, notwithstanding decades of initiatives at modernizing the sector, the cows raised the Chinese way still lag far behind their Western counterparts in milking efficiency. An official from Henan Province, in a recent interview with thepaper.cn, declared frankly that Chinese milk stands no chance at all in the face of much cheaper imports from the West.

As the price of imported milk powder has declined from 35,000 yuan (US$5,600) per ton in 2013 to about 18,000 yuan today, dairy companies cannot but use imported milk powder rather than local milk as raw materials. The difference in price can be explained by the difference in the efficiency of the cows. Chinese cows produce an average of 6 tons of milk a year, against the 11 on average in the West, with some cows in the West capable of yielding as much as 20 tons a year.

As Lymbery and Oakeshott explain in their book, this efficiency is achieved at the cost of the environment and human health. Contrary to the standard image conceived of modern farming, factory farms consume massive amounts of water, fuel and feed, only to produce an inferior and unhealthy product.

The industrialized farms’ unnatural conditions form hotbeds for disease that only a literal bath of antibiotics can keep at bay. The increasing distances operators must transport animals for slaughter raise the chances of contamination along the route. There is rising evidence that big pig farms incubate disease that could prove catastrophic for people everywhere.

In Shanghai a couple of years ago, a huge number of carcasses of disease-borne pigs were dumped into the Huangpu River.

The health costs of big farming for human beings can be less obvious. Research indicates that “the ratio of ‘bad’ to ‘good’ fat in farmed animals was 50:1, compared with the less than 3:1 in their wild counterparts, in addition to the fact that factory meat has chemical and additive residue. This cheap meat from factories leads to a paradigm shift that has far-reaching implications for people. “The insatiable demands for grain and soybeans to feed ... billions of animals ... means ... vast tracts of prime agricultural land are being used to grow feed instead of crops for human consumption,” the book observes.

This inferior meat is then consumed by human beings. Meat consumption in wealthy countries is three times the amount considered healthy. Such over-consumption takes a toll on the environment. This modernized way of life, erroneously perceived as “affluent,” is unsustainable because meat requires around 10 times more water per calorie to produce than vegetables. There is no feasible scenario suggesting that a typical Asian can eat like an average North American without destroying the planet.

Health implications

Ironically, for different motivations, the West had been spreading tirelessly the gospel of prosperity. It fuels the demand for high-yielding, pest- or disease-resistant genetically modified soybeans, wheat, corn and other grains. At first they reap bounties. But the land soon requires greater amounts and concentrates of chemical to overcome the effects of depleting the soil.

This race to the bottom results in poisoned land where nothing of value can grow. No one is in a position to foresee the long-term effects of GM crops on human beings. “World hunger is a convenient cover for what can be a deeply dubious business, where profit comes before the efficient production of food for people,” write the authors. The irony is that, the book says, 80 percent of the world’s malnourished children live in countries that produce an agricultural surplus.

Additionally, as the dumping milk case suggested, in the industrialized food chain, dairy farmers had been sinking towards the bottom of the food link, insignificant, and wielding little bargaining power. In the glorious age of globalization, those engaged in the actual process of production become eminently disposable. As with an overpriced LV bag, the profits go to the label owner, rather than the maker of the bag. In the strange logic of the capital, it makes more economic sense to dump the milk than to give it away or put it to other uses. When we talk about rural reinvigoration, modernization always features prominently.

But as Confucius said, [as cited in the book], “For all man’s supposed accomplishments, his continued existence is completely dependent upon six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”