Feature: Fair Oaks Farm, a glimpse of U.S. dairy production

More than 70 miles south of Chicago and down into the state of Indiana lies the vast Fair Oaks Farm along the Inter-State 65 Road.

Fair Oaks Farm is a collection of eleven farms, and each of the farms has about 3,000 cows. It produces over 250,000 gallons of milk every day, and delivers the milk produced every day to the processing plants across the country from here all the way down to Florida in the summertime.

Originally started in 1999, Fair Oaks Farm is a society of its own. It grows crops, feeds grass, raises cows, processes fresh dairy products, and transforms farm's waste into energy.

Mark Stoermann, chief operating officer of Newtrient, has been part of the Fair Oaks Farm and dairy industry for almost 50 years. His company Newtrient works more to increase the nutrients of the feed for the cow, rather adding nutrients to the milk.

At the mountain-high feed stacking field, Mark told Xinhua that the feed is very important, "what we do with the feed is that we harvest and bring in feeds from all over, then we mix into a total mixed ration so the cow is eating a specialized ration based on the nutritional values in the feed."

Experts constantly adjust feed component to help cows produce healthy milk people are looking for, Mark added.

Touring the farm, Xinhua found that the Fair Oaks Farm uses GPS technology for applying fertilizer and nutrients and harvesting; science and data collection for tracking what fields feeds come from; radio frequency tagging to track which cow is being milked and how much milk they produce. Actually, the farm has tracked the milk every step of the way.

Quick cooling is another way the farm uses to ensure that there are no contaminants in the milk.

In a room besides the milking parlor, Mark showed Xinhua two pipes leading to two tanks. One pipe feels warm; and the other feels icy cold.

Mechanism here is that the milk coming out of cow is quickly cooled to almost freezing through the two tanks, and will stay cold and fresh until it is pasteurized. By this way, the farm has kept the number of bacteria in the milk at the lowest level. "It's a very integrated, very elaborate system from the grass to the glass," Mark said.

"Milk is tested more than any other food," Mark stressed. It is tested when it comes out of the cow, goes into the truck, is taken off the truck, and through the whole food process so that consumers can have very safe milk and milk products to drink and eat, he said.

Fair Oaks Farms also brings Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to a whole new light. Farms' waste has been converted into energy, say CNG, by way of anaerobic digesters. As a result, the farm' s use of diesel was cut by two million gallons in 2013.

Talking of dairy production he has engaged in for nearly half of the century, Mark said "sustainability isn't just something we claim, it's how we live."

Feeding and herd management in the United States is a technical affair. The country has built up a huge agro- business around growing the crops, feeding the animals, harvesting the crops, storing the crops, preparing the feed, feeding the cows, taking care of the waste products, and converting those waste products into nutrition that can go back into the land.

"It is a big recycling system that continues to bring the nutrients back and continues to produce a nutritious product for people," Mark said.

Technology has played an important role in helping the farm save money while improving milk quality and ensuring milk safety. "We can produce milk almost at the same price that we produced it 25 to 30 years ago, but the standards of quality and safety are so much higher," said Mark, "that's what the technology brings us."

Milk produced at Fair Oaks Farm is now used all the way down into Atlanta, Georgia or the northern part of Florida. "The technology allows us to do that and allows that milk to be safe for people," Mark said.

A unique part of the farm is that it not only engages in dairy production, but also educates the public about modern farming. There are a restaurant and a cheese house filled with fresh dairy products from the farm at its tourists' center, which are very popular among tourists. Endit