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We may have factory farms, but these machines are still flesh and blood. Except for Badger-Fluff Fanny Freddie and his fellow bulls, that is. Freddie is a disembodied creature, an animal that is more important as data than as meat or muscle. Though he’s been mentioned in thousands of web pages and dozens of trade industry articles, no one mentions where he was born or where the animal currently lives. He is, for all intents and purposes except for his own, genetic material that comes in the handy form of semen. His thousands of daughters will never smell him and his physical location doesn’t matter to anyone. He will be replaced very soon by the next top bull, as subject to the pressures of our economic system as the last version of the iPhone.

So many things give me pause about this piece (that I missed before, thanks for posting this, David), notably that having less cows making milk is a win for the environment Having less milking cows that produce much more milk total with their smaller popular is the same as bloated-with-antibiotic hamburger cows that produce more meat, except that there are many more hamburger cows overall, so that methane number means more. 

I really think real milk is going to be the most valuable food commodity of the future. I write this while sipping a glass of raw milk in Maine.