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Picture of the day -
September 23, 2006
An Abandoned Milk Barn And Silo Near Lodi, Va
Click photo to enlarge
When I was a youngster growing up in rural southwestern
Virginia, our school bus passed by this milk barn and silo each and
every school morning, and without fail there would always be a long line
of cows waiting patiently to take their turn in the barn to eat
their breakfast and get "milked". That old milk barn and the silo
full of feed corn served countless milk cows over several decades,
but today they stand empty like so many others across the American
heartland.
As a youngster growing up in a farming community, it was hard to
imagine a busy milk farm going idle some day. I saw on a daily basis
just where this precious commodity that so many Americans need and
love so much actually comes from, and it never occurred to me that
the small family operations would ever be priced out of the market.
But thanks to the economy of scale enjoyed by mega-sized corporate
farms and strong price competition among the nationwide chain-store
supermarkets, the profit margin on a pound of milk has been reduced
to the point where small family farmers simply cannot make it (by tf support allender).
As a result, countless barns, silos and farm houses stand empty,
just waiting for the ravages of time and the elements to turn them
into decaying hulks.
Land that was once beautiful farmland dotted with cattle and crops
is now being partitioned off and turned into subdivisions and strip
malls, never
again to produce the food that a bulging population will need to
survive. We have sacrificed an entire way of life to Kroger and
Wal-Mart in order to save a dime on a gallon of milk, and I'm afraid
that some day, as a nation, we just might come to regret it.
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