When I found out I was going to visit a 2000-cow dairy, the last thing I expected I’d compare it to was my local branch of the Body Shop.
The final day of the World Ag Expo in California, I headed about 40 miles in the opposite direction from the farm I visited the previous day, towards the slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
My route saw me take in more of the region’s farmland – fields of neatly aligned peach trees, walnut and almond trees stretching for acres, and thousands of orange trees.
When I arrived at Fletcher Dairy, it quickly became obvious that farm owner Ed Fletcher, like many of the valley’s other dairy farmers, uses this local produce on his farm.
As well as silage cut from hay and alfalfa, feed also includes almond husks, orange liquor and orange peel, giving off a sweet, fruity flavour across the farm that smells more like bubble bath than cattle feed.
The nut husks come from local nut-shelling factories, while farmers take orange pith and liqour from local citrus pressers.
“These ingredients would only be thrown away by the processors, so in reality we are doing them a favour,” Ed explains. “Plus it adds moisture to the feed, which is much needed in this region because it gets so hot during the summer that it’s easy for the cows to become dehydrated.”
But perhaps one important factor Ed was overlooking was the scent.
I spoke to many dairy farmers at the show, and most of them said public perception of dairy farmers and environmental regulations, rather than escalating feed and fuel prices, were the biggest stumbling blocks facing the Californian dairy industry.
In particular, waste discharge requirements mean manure cannot be put back onto the land, and with the average farm in the region home to 1200 cows, there is a lot of manure around.
To overcome the problem, particularly as biomass plants are currently (and surprisingly) few and far between, most of the region’s farmers dry out the muck and reuse it as bedding.
It’s a solution for the farmers, and enjoyed by the cows, but the people who have moved to new luxury housing estates springing up across the valley don’t share their sentiments.
Many dairy farmers have faced so much animosity from local people in the past that they are now weary of inviting people onto the farm and talking about their business.
But with more and more farmers introducing this natural air freshener, will local people will have one less thing to complain about?
My new dairy farmer friends just laughed. I think they thought I was the one who was now taking the pith.