I always get my dairy local. Where I live I am lucky enough to have a family farm that services our area. The nice thing is that their milk isn't that much more than any of the name brands. Maybe 50 cents a gallon.
You can tour their farms and watch the process and they are very open about it.
When I saw your post I thought it would a Mom and Pa farm down the road with 5 cows, but this actually looks like a small (to medium?) size factory farm to me, well marketed.
How many cows do they have? Apparently farms with more than 100 cows make up just 0.3 percent of the total dairy farm population.
You can clearly see that it's a factory-like installation. Are all those people part of the family or full-time employees? I bet several are employees.
At least it does not come from across the world it's local so less impactful.
> use to make the richest ice cream that you’ll ever taste.
The other day I tried one of those plant-based Magnum ice creams, I couldn't tell the difference and actually liked it more.
Some of the worst practices I've witnessed (shooting/drowning male calves) existed on small family farms. The idea that these places are synonymous with humane is absolutely false. The male calves are still treated horrifically - either killed within days or sent to a veal farm. And the female calves are usually put into isolation, which is horrific for a young mammal to have to go through.
You can tour their farms and watch the process and they are very open about it.
http://debackerfamilydairy.com/
If we had more of these local farms servicing more areas it would definitely help reduce reliance on factory farms.
If you live in an urban/highly populated area I don't see anyway for a small farm like this to produce enough for the population.