New cowsheds create wide divide

OPINION: What to think about dairy sheds, as featured on the front page and online on Tuesday?

There are two clear schools of thought, positive and negative, which can also be loosely bracketed as farmers versus townies.

There are few people in the middle.

On the plus side there is less pollution from a shed operation. Cow effluent and runoff are better able to be managed. Everyone has to like that.

Not so clear-cut is the aspect that life is easier for the cow, which it obviously is, because the cows live longer. But is that necessarily a good thing?

Farmers think so because it gives them extra production, townies swayed the other way because the animals are inside for 10 months of the year which isn't natural.

Also not clear-cut are the benefits or otherwise of the sheds themselves.

Townies think of the lack of sun and that cows don't get to wander free in paddocks, while cockies think of the times their animals don't have to endure weather extremes such as floods or heatwaves.

Cows die in these things.

Perhaps the biggest disconnect though is around the thinking that farms are businesses.

Original post:
New cowsheds create wide divide