https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Moomba

The section on etymology is particularly amusing.

1. countries really don't like being dependent on other countries for feeding their population - the current Russian invasion in Ukraine and the issues surrounding their grain exports have shown how bad such dependencies can get in the worst case.

2. basic agricultural staples - potatoes, grain, rice, but also eggs and milk in powder form - are a global market these days, which means there's a ruthless competition in place, made worse by at least the US and EU doling out insane amounts of subsidies for their farmers.

3. in some markets like China, scandals around food are the norm, which in the case of milk powder led to second order effects like Chinese tourists and expats in Western countries buying up milk powder at scale and shipping it back to their relatives in China - which led to a massive increase in price in affected Western markets, and to the political question if governments are effectively subsidizing China's issues at the cost of citizens.

4. Western masses are getting ever more poor which puts an insane amount of political relevancy to the price of food (see e.g. the current egg issues in the US). At the same time, both distribution, refinement and production of milk (and other agricultural commodities) has seen a massive consolidation wave in the last decades, giving these mega-corporations a massive amount of leverage over everyone else.

5. To protect their farmers, some countries have introduced price regulations (minimal prices) or tariffs, in addition to the subsidies.

One particular cow ("Evjelin" IIRC) would try to avoid her own calves because (it seemed) she much preferred the machine it seemed.

The final year we found her calf with a broken neck in a flat area of the pasture. (Yes, they were always allowed to stay outdoors around when they calved and usually they spent a few days outside together. Mostly this was great I think and except this incident I only remember one other were it was a problem: one calf had got under the fence and into the bog and the cow had followed it into the bog and it was a real mess and I was a really proud teenager when I was able to get out the calf. Both of them needed help to get out but both survived and recovered nicely IIRC.)

(source: grew up on a tiny dairy farm)

(Not unlike human employers who have an incentive to treat their employees well but often don't.)

Farm organizations like to say farmers have every reason to keep their livestock in the best condition, implying that they're frolicking on pasture in peak health, but that's not really true. A lot of times it means miserable condition on concrete or a freezing feedlot. Livestock animals, like humans, are resilient and can keep producing through some pretty terrible treatment. The only ways to combat that seem to be A) customers who actively seek out farms that practice good animal welfare practices, or B) reasonable animal welfare laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_cell_count

Small, direct-to-customer farms are the ones most likely to lean into customer-pleasing animal welfare practices. But to profitably sell direct to customers within the law in most US jurisdictions, a dairy pretty much has to put in its own pasteurization setup, a major investment. That's kept dairy from developing the equivalent of cage-free eggs.

What does that really mean, though? A farmer down the road produces "free-range" chickens. While it is true that the operation is technically setup for it, which is what is required to meet certification, never in my life have I seen the barn doors open.

It's probably not an accurate comparison, but I don't find any consolation in the fact that a lot of the bulk/weight of cleaning my cat's litter box is water. I don't know if it meaningfully changes anything about the task for a cow though.

Cockroach Milk: Nutrition and Benefits:

https://www.medicinenet.com/cockroach_milk_nutrition_and_ben...

>Ethical concerns

>There are concerns about whether it is ethical to produce cockroach milk in bulk because it requires killing almost 1,000 cockroaches to extract 100 mL of milk.

I've heard the same ethical concerns raised about eating MAGA brains!

What equipment from the major agricultural manufacturers would you consider to be not robots these days? Even a simple tool like a field cultivator now employs robotics for things like keeping it at a precise depth, never mind the extensive robotics involved in more complex equipment.

There are some smaller companies still producing agricultural equipment that is not recognizable as a robot, but I'd consider that to be the exception rather than the norm.