Philosophy

Love's Labours Lost

I went on a beef and dairy cattle tour near Mora with the Minnesota Cattleman's Association -- one of the most idea-rich days I have spent. At the end, I did the sum of the day this way: small and medium operators in that area don't make much. They'd likely be better off selling their pastures for hobby farms. Farming for them is a labor of love, and, for many of them, care and affection for their livestock is a big part of what makes life worth living. They also partly think about their cows as living money-machines, and that thought is in some tension with their obvious concern for their cows as animals like themselves, only not so bright.

My vegan friends will not be able to make sense of the idea that one can both care for a creature and intend to slaughter it for money. I have trouble with that too, but I think, empirically, that attitude is present in these people. Indeed, some may care more deeply for the welfare of their animals than those who work to end the whole animal production system.

The puzzle I am left with is that beef farming seems to be an uneasy compromise between entrepreneurial capitalism and shepherding in something like the sense Jesus meant it. It hasn't maybe dawned on people that, as entrepreneurial capitalism, lots of these operations are ceasing to make sense, so that, if they are to make sense, it must be through an infusion of a different vision, or rather, a shift in emphasis within the broad motivating vision that makes small to medium scale farming possible. As one farmer put it: we have to get the feeling back into this operation.

I came away from conversations with ranchers and with the owner of a local slaughterhouse oddly optimistic about the future of the animal-human bond. There is great confusion afoot, but also a great reservoir of pretty-good-will. I still don't think beef ranching makes sense, but I think it isn't all that far from making sense, and, if it can be protected for a while from the overpowering presence of truly rapacious capitalist agriculture, great and beautiful new structures may emerge.