"At one time, milk was one of the more natural processes in farming. 
A bull would impregnate a cow — an actual bull, before the age of artificial insemination . She was pregnant for 
nine months and then a baby cow 
was born.

Afterwards, from the calf’s birth to up to three months after it was weaned, the farmer would milk the excess dairy by hand, for drinking, butter and maybe cheese. That’s it.

Until now.

With the rise of factory farming, milk is now a most unnatural operation. The modern dairy farm can have hundreds, even thousands of cows. Today’s average dairy cow produces six to seven times as much milk as she did a century ago. Cows spend their lives being 
constantly impregnated in order to produce milk. Bulls can be difficult, so the majority of dairy cows are now artificially inseminated. Sex is a thing of the past. Antibiotics cure infections. Hormones have been designed to increase milk production. The cows 
are pushed hard for this production, and, after roughly three or four years, their production slackens and they are sold off for hamburger meat. Today, 
the United States is the largest producer of milk in the world, followed by India and China.

The animals spend their lives being fed in an indoor stall or a crowded feedlot. Each cow produces milk for as much as 305 days a year. One of the largest dairy farms in the world is under construction in Vietnam and is slated to hold 32,000 cows.

But does it have to be this way? As dairy farmers in the United States struggle to make a living, a new kind of operation has taken hold — one that puts animal welfare and small-scale operations at the heart of the business. It’s an experiment in progress, but during visits to a number of upstate New York operations, there were signs that this “new milk” could be a viable way forward. The lingering question is: Will consumers pay more to know where their milk comes from?"

Photograph by Ben Stechschulte