This is an excerpt from a column posted at BizOpinion.
The challenges facing agriculture, especially animal agriculture, are evident in news reports almost daily.
* A report by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism uncovered concerns about estrogen in well water in Kewaunee County, where the combination of big dairy farms and porous bedrock may be threatening groundwater in a previously unexpected way.
* A video that appears to show workers physically abusing dairy cattle in Brown County has renewed criticism in some quarters of “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or mega-farms that have grown in number in Wisconsin from 97 in 2003 to 245 last year.
* The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has put in place a major new policy to phase out what it believes is the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in cows, pigs and chicken raised for meat, a practice that experts believe has increased human resistance to antibiotics.
In a state such as Wisconsin, where agriculture was a $61 billion industry last year and dairy accounted for nearly half ($26.5 billion) of the total, those kind of headlines have combined with worries about the next federal farm bill, ever-changing consumer trends and more to create a sense of unease about the future. In a society where fewer and fewer people have any ties to farming, even a generation or two removed, how will agriculture meet its many challenges?
Managing information better and using science and technology to solve problems will be part of the answer.
Whether it’s producing tasty, low-sodium cheese, exploring new ways to ensure food safety, learning how to better manage manure, finding less invasive ways to keep animals healthy or helping dairy farms leave a smaller carbon footprint, science and technology are weighing in.
