Paper short abstract:

On a planet with finite land, we need to prioritize what to feed a growing population. Exploring the feed-food complex is urgent for a green transition. Through work on dairy practices, the paper looks at ways to bring production and consumption into contact addressing the challenges this entails.

Paper long abstract:

On a planet with finite arable land, we need to discuss how we share resources and what to feed a growing population. Producing food from animals takes up larger areas than plant-based food. Exploring this feed-food complex seems urgent to understand transitions of the food industry. This paper presents ethnographic work on dairy practices to reflect on ways to bring production into contact with the consumed product – and the challenges that this entails for intensive agriculture.

The paper emerges from research on dairy cows in Denmark. Cattle are often singled out for their unique ability to transform grasses, inedible to humans, into meat and milk. However, by now foraging on grassland is rarely practiced. Instead, cows are kept in barns and fed silage along with concentrate to meet their genetic predisposition for high milk yield. Seasonal oscillations and variable qualities of grasses on poor soils will not do. Seemingly both the nature of the cow as a ruminant and the nature of milk as a nurturing substance fade from view. Instead, industrial cows have become standardized efficient metabolisms, attempting maximum control of landscapes and biological processes. In recent years products that foreground connections between land and milk have been marketed. For all their intuitive qualities, the products nonetheless come at a price, showing that the agricultural system as a whole thrives through disconnecting farm, industry and dinner table. Overall, the paper argues that rethinking the food-feed ratio and reconnecting cows with landscapes are key to future animal food systems.