The Cows are Gone

I live on the hills just above the Green River Valley, and there is not one week that I don't go down to the valley and drive through lush farmland. Not far away is Smith Brothers dairy farm. When we first came to live in our house about 23 years ago, there were cows along West Valley Highway, in fact there were cows just down the street from where live. I loved seeing the little calves walking their wobbly way to their mothers every spring, and how they'd gain coordination over the course of a month, and run around the grassy fields.

The cows are all gone now.

I heard that most of the dairy farmers in Western Washington have either gone out of business or have left to go to Eastern Washington. Between the lower price of milk, and the extremely high cost of complying with environmental regulation these days, farmers can't afford to run their dairy farms any more. I'm not seeing as many vegetable farmers in the valley much either, which is too bad, because the Green River Valley is one of the most fertile river valleys in the world.

Instead, there are warehouses and strip business offices all along West Valley Highway, empty because of the recession. I'd prefer to see the cows grazing along the highway instead of the empty warehouses. At least there'd be productive use of the land.

Smith Brothers is still delivering milk, though--that's where I get my milk and dairy products. I guess they get their milk from the few remaining dairy farmers around, although I expect they most likely get it from across the mountains. It makes me feel sad to think that farmers are being booted out of the most fertile land in the world. There's something wrong about it being paved over and industrial warehouses being built over it, only to be left empty. Covered over wasted space, so that even passersby can't see the land any more.

I see this happening because I live close to these farms. But I don't think those with the biggest voting and political impact--people who live in the bigger cities of Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett--know, perhaps even care, that their local food sources are disappearing.

The weird thing? If we kept environmental regulations reasonable enough so that local farmers could afford to operate their farms, we wouldn't be having huge trucks burning tons of fossil fuel to transport our food hundreds of miles. The food would be available much closer to home.

Buy local. It's the sensible thing to do.