Consumer awareness -- and concern -- is growing over the impacts of food production on environmental quality and personal health. The average Joe, public health specialists, and a diversity of organizations are asking more probing, sophisticated questions about these impacts and placing pressure on retailers and the food industry to purchase and sell food from farmers who are committed to long-term sustainability, humane animal care, and planetary health.
In this era of heightened scrutiny on how food is produced, American agriculture is evolving toward extremes. The number and importance of very small farms, and very large ones is growing. The number of mid-size farms is declining, as is their share of total production. In the dairy industry, cow numbers have been increasing for close to 20 years in arid parts of the west, especially in states like Idaho and New Mexico, where large industrial dairy farms manage one to several thousand cows in feedlot-based farms.
A calculator has been developed to help consumers, dairy farmers, and food companies estimate the avoided environmental, public health, and animal welfare impacts associated with shifting dairy cows from conventional to organic management. The design of the calculator, the equations in it, and sources of input variable values are described in this report.