No longer using the time-consuming grazing process, grain-fed cows could be kept indoors. The Holstein, a large, usually black-and-white Dutch cow, prospered on grain and produced tremendous quantities of milk. With the pressure to produce more milk came more selective breeding of livestock, and, by the 1980s, the dairy industry was dominated by corn-fed Holstein cows. This made it harder, bordering on impossible, to make a profit on milk.ДЄs industrial agriculture evolved, the dairy industry became dominated by the huge operations that provide milk for families all over the country. Unfortunately, the prices for grain and fuel went even higher, while milk was fixed at a low price.

Many dairy farmers were also grain farmers, but soon it became difficult to produce enough to sustain their cows, and they became grain purchasers. To produce more, cows needed to eat more protein, which meant farmers bought high-protein grains, such as soy and grasses like alfalfa. The federal government fixed a minimum price for Grade A liquid milk, milk for drinking. Certification brought a higher retail price that few customers were willing or able to pay.ДЄnd so in the mid-20th century dairy farming underwent a major change. In the 1890s a doctor named Henry Coit established a board of physicians, called the Medical Milk Commission, to certify the safety of a farmвЂ™s milk. Once milk is pasteurized it is considered no longer вЂњa natural productвЂќ like raw milk. Yet pasteurization was and, to some degree, is still controversial. French scientist Louis Pasteur demonstrated in 1862 that heating milk could eliminate the risk. During the 1800s, poor sanitation in dairies led to outbreaks of milk-borne disease. Milk has long been a source of controversy, both for its production and consumption. The lingering question is: Will consumers pay more to know where their milk comes from? *** ItвЂ™s an experiment in progress, but during visits to a number of upstate New York operations, there were signs that this вЂњnew milkвЂќ could be a viable way forward. One of the largest dairy farms in the world is under construction in Vietnam and is slated to hold 32,000 cows.Д«ut does it have to be this way? As dairy farmers in the United States struggle to make a living, a new kind of operation has taken holdвЂќЕ вЂ“ вЂќЕ one that puts animal welfare and small-scale operations at the heart of the business. Each cow produces milk for as much as 305 days a year. The animals spend their lives being fed in an indoor stall or a crowded feedlot. Today, вЂthe United States is the largest producer of milk in the world, followed by India and China. The cows вЂare pushed hard for this production, and, after roughly three or four years, their production slackens and they are sold off for hamburger meat.

Hormones have been designed to increase milk production.

Bulls can be difficult, so the majority of dairy cows are now artificially inseminated. Cows spend their lives being вЂconstantly impregnated in order to produce milk. TodayвЂ™s average dairy cow produces six to seven times as much milk as she did a century ago. The modern dairy farm can have hundreds, even thousands of cows. With the rise of factory farming, milk is now a most unnatural operation. Until now.вЂ™ДЄfterwards, from the calfвЂ™s birth to up to three months after it was weaned, the farmer would milk the excess dairy by hand, for drinking, butter and maybe cheese. She was pregnant for вЂnine months and then a baby cow вЂwas born.ДЇrom the calfвЂ™s birth to up to three months after it was weaned, the farmer would milk the excess dairy by hand, for drinking, butter and maybe cheese. вЂA bull would impregnate a cowвЂќЕ вЂ“ вЂќЕ an actual bull, before the age of artificial inseminationвЂќЕ . While most American farms still have fewer than 100 cows, 86 percent of milk is produced on the 26 percent of farms that have more than 100 cows.ДЄt one time, milk was one of the more natural processes in farming. Milk has become a global industry, produced at a scale that defies nature. That vision, illusory even at the time, is now almost completely obsolete. This imagery is so historically pervasive that in 1935, a Los Angeles milk inspector initiated the Dairy Roadside Appearance Program, encouraging farmers to clean up their land, paint their barns and plant flowers to perpetuate this milking myth to urban milk buyers. The typical dairy buyer lives in a city or a suburb, and likes to imagine that milk still comes from a small family farm with a red barn and cows grazing on a hill, where loving human hands squirt milk from the animalsвЂ™ teats into a pail. But these days, we milk drinkers are so disconnected from where our milk comes from that it could well originate in a vending machine.

Ever since the first cow udders were yanked by human hands, the substance has invited inspection, suspicion, fear and desire. Milk myths didnвЂ™t stop with the Greeks, though.

Pure farming milk