Farm to Factory

1
Farm to Factory
Cyrus McCormick

• How Technology Has Changed The American Farm

2
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Old style farming eggs being gathered on an
Amish farm. After the hens lay the eggs, they are
gathered into one of the nests then put in a
basket and carried to the house.
Amish farm pictures taken with the permission of
the Lambright family of Marion County. All
pictures were taken by Barb Adams except when
noted.
3
What eggs arent used for human consumption, are
hatched for future hens, fryers and so forth.
4
Heres the hen house where all the action is!
Heres the king of the castle!
Describe what you see in this picture. What are
the living conditions like for these chickens?
5
My, how things have changed. I wonder if
Jefferson imagined this kind of an agricultural
society? My Amish neighbors had around 50 to 60
chickens, including the young ones. In this
mega-chicken farm, there are close to three
million laying hens.
By the way a mega-farm or a factory farm is the
new kind of farm of the 21st century.
6
There are fourteen barns that are 660 feet long.
They are filled to the brim with laying hens.
This is the mega-chicken farm near Mt. Victory,
Ohio. It is just one of several in the state of
Ohio.
7
These pictures were obtained from the Mercy for
Animals website. I was not allowed to enter the
mega farm to take my own pictures. These
pictures are from the Croton mega-chicken farm
which is similar in size to the Mt. Victory
complex.
Describe the living conditions for these animals.
What are the possible problems that you can
foresee from a farm like this? What other
concerns need to be addressed differently with a
farm of this style versus the small traditional
family farm?
8
The hens are confined 24/7 in these cages in the
buildings. There are several hens per cage.
When they lay an egg it is deposited on a
conveyor belt that takes it to the wash room.
From there it is boxed and shipped.
9
Compare and contrast the living conditions of the
chickens in this farm versus the Amish farm.
What benefits would there be to this kind of
farm? What problems would there be?
10
Here again, is the old fashioned way corn was
hoed and fertilized.
11
For those city folks, these arms spread out to
cover more ground when spraying.
Most up-to-date farmers have their crops sprayed
with this apparatus, a floater, which can spray
fertilizer and weed killer.
12
In the old days, farmers would use a scythe to
harvest grain by hand. The Amish use a grain
binder, Cyrus McCormicks invention. Later it
would be threshed. The picture below shows how
an up-to-date farmer harvests wheat, with a
combine. What would be the costs for each way of
harvesting? The time involved? The labor?
This picture came from google pictures.
13
No, Im not Amish and I dont normally milk cows.
These are two of the eight cows our Amish
neighbors milk twice a day, by hand. (They do
not allow their pictures to be taken, it is
against their religion. So I got in the picture
instead, with my three-year old daughter. My
six-year old had to take the picture.)
Their milk can only be sold to make cheese, it is
Grade B milk. The milk man picks up their milk
once a day and transports it to Michigan to a
cheese house. While waiting for pickup, they
store it in canisters in the pump house, in cold
water.
14
This is a small dairy operation Grade A milk
(goes to Reiter Dairy). Seventy cows are milked
twice a day. It takes two hours to do the
milking. The milk truck empties the storage
container once a day. Besides the milking cows,
there are bred heifers and calves being raised
for future breeding. When not being milked the
cows are free to roam the barn and pasture.
These pictures were taken at McMahan Dairy Farm
in Somersville. (The wife is a teacher in my
building.)
15
This is the milk storage container from the
McMahan Dairy which holds the milk from 70 cows
milked twice a day.
Taking one more step up with technology here
are the milk storage containers from the DeVries
Dutch Dairy in Marion County. 700 cows are
milked three times a day at this dairy using the
latest state-of-the-art technology.
16
The cows are milked on a carousel that rotates
constantly. The cows are herded into each
station, hooked up to the milking machine,
milked, then unhooked and herded off, all while
the carousel continues to move around.
Workers work to clean the equipment before the
next group of cows are milked. My daughters
loved the merry-go-round. Compare this dairy
to the Amish farm and the McMahan Dairy.
17
The cows are leaving the milking carousel (left)
and returning to their stalls (below).
The cows are penned 24/7 except when being
milked. They at least do get to see the sun,
unlike the chickens on the mega-chicken farm.
However, they never are on open pasture.
18
You cant fully appreciate just how large this
complex is. These pictures do not do it justice.
Two large buildings with stall after stall for
each cow. The buildings are then attached to the
carousel/milking area. Behind the complex is a
large manure pit.
19
How much food do 700 cows go through in one day?
How do you provide for these animals?
This is silage bunker. Hay and corn is chopped
and blown into this pile then covered with a tarp
to make it ferment.
20
And what about all that animal waste? This is the
manure pit. Most of the animal waste from the
dairy is washed down the drain that feeds the
pit.
The manure waste is then siphoned into a truck
that would then take it to various fields where
it is spread as fertilizer.
21
In Summary

• What is the trade-off in having a small farm with
  less technology versus a mega-farm using a lot of
  technology?
• What is the effect on the environment?
• Is one kind of farming better for the
  environment?
• Have we become too dependent on technology and if
  so, at what cost?