There
is a custom on the family dairy farm I work on that has been practiced for at
least 50 years. Whenever a heifer calf is born, it is given a name with the
same first initial as its mother. Whether this served some
record keeping/pedigree purpose or was just a notion of my grandparent’s family,
I do not know. For example, if a cow named Bessie gave birth to a heifer, the
heifer’s name would have to start with a B, let’s say Becky. Lynn
When
my brother took over the dairy, his family continued the practice. Now with
over 200 cows, naming them has become even more challenging. Then about ten
years ago, this event occurred. They had the eggs flushed from one of the great
milk producing cows, named Elle, fertilized them in the lab, and implanted the embryos into
several surrogate females. They bore about six daughters of Elle. Now cows do
not breed as prolific as rabbits, but in a few short years Elle’s daughters
bore daughters, plus Elle had more daughters of her own, and at this point
there are even some great-granddaughters in the herd. By now the total is well
over a dozen, and you guessed it, all their names start with an E.
In
the span of time I have been helping my brother milk the cows, I noticed that
Elle’s offspring have a distinct udder shape to the point that when one comes
in to milk, even without seeing an ear-tag with a name on, I can tell to which
family she belongs. Because their names all start with an E, I started calling
these cows, ecows.
Today
we have email, ecommerce, ebay, and I imagine many others of the type where the
E stands for electronic. Now you know what the E in ecows represents, but it
also could be for egg or embryo I suppose, but could it be for electronic, too?
It
got me thinking. I could just use my computer to notify the milk processing
plant where we ship our milk that we ship 18,000 pounds of milk every other
day. Their computer receives that information, and then pays us for the milk. I
mean it is on the computer and computers do not make mistakes, right? The
processor can even deduct from the payment the hauling fee for the trucker to
receive – he needs to make a living too. And not too bad a living either, as he
doesn’t have to put fuel in or drive the truck. Just pay his license and other
government fees.
I
think I’ll call this milk, emilk. You might be wondering where the processor
will get the money to pay us. No problem. They tell their computer that the
emilk was pasteurized and homogenized, vitamin D added and packaged in one half
pint cartons. The computer then invoices (computer to computer of course) the
school districts who normally buy milk from the processor for the 3344 half
pints that 18,000 pounds yield. The school district’s computers then notify the
federal government’s computers that the emilk was used for those children
qualifying for the free and reduced price lunches and breakfasts. The feds then
issue payment to the schools that in turn pay the processor. It is a WIN - WIN
- WIN situation. We can sell emilk without having to feed, milk and otherwise
care for cows. The hauler does not wear out his truck, nor does the processor
wear out its equipment or have to spend money cleaning and sanitizing it, and it
has no costs for shipping the emilk to the schools.
Who
could possibly be the loser here? The children?
No way – the feds say they are overweight anyway, so receiving emilk
instead of real milk will benefit them. They win too.
All
of this is in line with the prevailing philosophy in this country. We are a
nation of consumers, not producers. It’s all about what we use, not what we
make, what we get, not give. Why work to produce if someone will give it to
you?
This
could never happen you say? Very true. If you ever had a management course, you
learned that controls are a vital function of an organization, and therefore,
there would be some controls in place to prevent this scenario from happening.
At least until we get to the federal government level. There it kind of scares
me. It makes me wonder how often payments such as the one I fabricated actually
occur – the government paying for something that was never received or even
existed. Even before computers, we know there has been graft and other thievery
in all levels of government. Computers just might make it easier.
Of course, the real losers are the taxpayers and the
taxpayer’s grandchildren, who will have a day of reckoning in the future if our
philosophy and our current government’s thinking do not change.
til next time<<<<<<<<<<<<< Mort
