Small Farms vs. Large Pastures: Whose Milk Is Safer and More Nutritious?

View 1: Small farms were the root cause of the melamine incident.

Rebuttal: They were not.

According to the official characterisation, it was milk collectors who added melamine to raw milk. So why would melamine be added to raw milk? At the time, nationwide demand for dairy products was booming, and large amounts of capital had poured into raw milk processing, creating a shortage of raw milk and sending milk prices soaring. Raw milk is sold by weight. How could one get more milk to sell? Simply adding water was not enough. Adding water dilutes the protein content, and dairies measure protein levels in milk by testing nitrogen content. At this point, someone thought of melamine (C₃H₆N₆): extremely high in nitrogen, white, water-soluble, and odourless — on the surface, the perfect additive.

But who would know these properties of melamine? Most milk collectors who deal with dairy farmers are themselves farmers. In the surveyed area, dairy farmers generally believe that milk collectors lack knowledge of melamine’s properties, and the farmers themselves certainly do not. The impression that small dairy farmers were responsible for the melamine incident does not match the official characterisation of the event, nor does it match the facts.

View 2: In terms of raw milk production, large pastures are safer.

Rebuttal: Not so.

First, let us consider the safety of feed (roughage such as straw, and concentrate feed). Feed safety means the feed is free of harmful substances. If cattle eat mouldy feed, the milk produced may contain harmful substances. Feed safety is separate from the nutritional value of feed.

For small dairy farmers, a small portion of their feed comes from their own straw and maize crops, while the bulk is purchased from the market. Large pastures rely almost entirely on the market for feed. Once straw is purchased, it must be fermented to make silage and fermented dry straw.

Since small farmers use the feed on their own holdings, they personally handle both the purchase of straw and the fermentation process. Because their needs are small-scale, they typically buy from nearby sources and know the sellers well, giving a measure of quality assurance. The small scale also makes it easier to inspect carefully at purchase and to be meticulous during production.

Large pastures rely on hired workers to purchase and prepare feed. Compared to small farmers, hired workers are paid to do a job, so their diligence and loyalty may be less assured. Because of the larger scale, feed must be sourced from further afield, and the relationship with suppliers is purely commercial — the quality assurance that comes from familiar village connections is lost. The sheer scale itself also makes it harder to be attentive and careful at every stage of purchasing and preparation. Once feed goes mouldy, aflatoxin levels in the raw milk can easily exceed the limit, and aflatoxin is carcinogenic. It is far from uncommon for well-known dairy brands to have aflatoxin exceedances reported in their products.

Now let us turn to veterinary drugs. When cattle fall ill, they need treatment. Whether cattle become ill is closely tied to their environment. Small dairy farmers practise small-scale, dispersed farming, whereas large pastures house thousands or tens of thousands of dairy cows in concentrated facilities. In the surveyed area, a veterinarian who has served both large pastures and small dairy farmers said: the incidence of illness among dairy cows is linked to stocking density — when density is high, cows become stressed and fall ill more often; on small farms, one person looks after ten to twenty cows and monitors them closely; on large pastures, supervision cannot be kept up, so metritis, mastitis, and hoof inflammation are more common; large pastures are willing to use generous amounts of concentrate feed, which can lead to rumen acidosis and also trigger hoof inflammation; large pastures do a good job on disease prevention, while smallholders are reluctant to spend the money.

However, with smallholders’ dispersed, low-density farming, the need for disease prevention is inherently less pressing than on large pastures. So, is the milk from the healthier cows of small dairy farmers safer, or is the milk from the sicker, more heavily medicated cows on large pastures safer?

Some might say that small farmers, chasing bargains, will use cheap, non-compliant veterinary drugs, or start selling milk before the withdrawal period has elapsed. First, large pastures face equally strong incentives to cut costs, especially as many are now publicly listed companies. Second, even small dairy farmers are required to retain samples when selling milk, and drug violations, if detected, carry liability. Third, what is most needed here is for the relevant regulatory authorities to take action and prevent non-compliant veterinary drugs from reaching the market.

View 3: In terms of raw milk distribution and processing, large pastures plus large dairy companies can guarantee safety.

Rebuttal: They cannot.

The quality of milking equipment and management practices is linked to the somatic cell count and colony count in milk. Once the milk is drawn, the quality of cold-storage equipment, management standards, and whether any substances have been deliberately added all affect raw milk safety.

Against the backdrop of smallholders being strongly pushed into concentrated breeding zones, whether the distribution of smallholder milk is safe hinges on the collection stations. The addition of the collection station as an extra link does not necessarily mean the process becomes unsafe. During the period when Sanlu built and operated its own collection stations, no incidents akin to the melamine scandal occurred. Problems only arose after Sanlu handed over the management of its collection stations to outside operators.

Before 2008, there was very little regulation of collection stations and itinerant milk collectors in China. After 2008, state oversight of these intermediaries increased. When farmers sell their milk, collection stations retain samples. If a batch is found to be non-compliant, the station checks the retained samples to trace the source, and penalties follow.

As for the processing stage, dairy consumers interviewed in the surveyed area widely feel that the dairy products lined up on supermarket shelves are from companies where one “has no idea what has been added”.

For ordinary consumers, the processing behind dairy company products is opaque. Whether consumers can obtain safe dairy products depends solely on brand reputation and state regulation. Under the strict state oversight of dairy products in place today, are the products of major brands safe? Not necessarily.

As shown in Figures 1 and 2, maggot-contaminated milk, mouldy milk — the brands at the centre of these scandals are all household names. Because dairy companies process milk on an industrial scale, any safety problem in the process can affect a very large volume of products.

Such cases reveal that relying on top-down state regulation cannot guarantee safety at the processing stage. In a context where food safety problems are frequent in China, even when a quality issue is not immediately visible to the eye and the ingredients list looks clean, many consumers remain uneasy about whether the product is truly safe.

First, whether small dairy farmers or large pastures, whoever fails to raise cattle properly and produces poor-quality milk should be phased out. That raises a question: under what circumstances would the farming side not properly care for their cattle? Or, to put it another way, when do regulatory problems arise?

Consider this: if good milk commanded a high price, would the farming side neglect their cattle? Of course not. But if you use the finest feed, the best veterinary drugs, and the most attentive care to produce the finest milk, yet have no control over the price it fetches — even having it deliberately driven down — who would bother to properly raise cattle? The incentive to cut corners then arises naturally.

This is precisely the situation facing dairy farming in China, and it is more acute for small dairy farmers. Raw milk is perishable, giving the farming side an inherent disadvantage over the processing side. There is a vast power imbalance between dairy farmers and dairy companies, and this is most pronounced for smallholders. This asymmetry of power gives dairy companies formidable bargaining power to drive down farmgate prices.

At the same time, domestic raw milk faces competition from imported dairy products. China’s predominantly zero-grazing model of cattle farming carries an inherent cost disadvantage compared with pasture-based grazing systems. Yet China is one of the most open dairy markets in the world, with an average tariff on dairy imports that is just one-fifth of the international average. New Zealand is the world’s largest dairy exporter, and China has a free trade agreement with it. New Zealand dairy products currently enter China duty-free. The influx of cheap imported milk has helped Chinese dairy companies depress farmgate prices.

Since producing quality does not guarantee a premium price, and investment may yield nothing in return, farmers are naturally reluctant to invest, and regulatory problems naturally follow. This is not a problem inherent to smallholder production as an organisational model, but a problem of the structure of the dairy industry chain and China’s dairy trade openness policies.

Second, large pastures + large dairy companies + top-down state regulation is the dominant model of dairy regulation in China. The formation of this model is linked to the melamine incident. The unprecedented emphasis on dairy safety that followed the incident, and the mindset at government level of equating food safety with large-scale production, led the government to vigorously promote scale-ups at both the farming and processing ends.

But as Figures 1 and 2 show, this regulatory model has not delivered genuine food safety. On the contrary, it has reinforced the power of large dairy companies. As a source of local tax revenue, powerful companies can distort government behaviour, which is detrimental to food safety regulation.

The dairy companies’ practice of favouring large suppliers while excluding small ones has further worsened the power imbalance between smallholders and dairy companies, allowing companies to exploit small farmers, who are left with fewer dairy companies to choose from.

At the same time, this model increases the distance between production and consumption, deepens the opacity of processing, and weakens consumers’ ability to monitor the production process. Therefore, this approach of favouring large players and excluding small ones, with top-down regulation, does not necessarily guarantee food safety.

Small dairy farmers’ production and processing represent an alternative food safety regulatory model. Besides selling their milk to dairy companies through intermediaries, smallholders may also sell fresh milk and yoghurt directly to consumers. This model emphasises localised production and consumption, enabling consumers to monitor producers directly — a bottom-up approach to regulation.

As Figures 3 and 4 show, small dairy farmers sell what they produce. Consumers visit the farm and can see whether the cows are healthy, what they are fed, whether the barns are clean, how the milking is done, and how the milk is filtered and packaged.

The production and processing of milk sold in supermarkets is opaque, whereas for smallholders’ milk these processes are entirely transparent — which is itself a form of oversight. Moreover, localised production and sales bring producers and consumers closer together, turning them into acquaintances, and that relationship further strengthens food safety.

Under this model, the production–consumption relationship is more balanced, which favours food safety. Not to mention the cost savings from local production and sales, and the revenue they bring to the local economy.

II. Raw Milk Nutritional Value: Small Farms vs. Large Pastures

First, in terms of nutritional content, smallholders’ milk is indeed generally less nutritious than milk from large pastures.

The nutritional value of raw milk is assessed primarily through indicators such as protein and butterfat content. Overall, the protein and butterfat levels in smallholders’ milk are indeed lower than those from large pastures, but they meet national standards (see table below).

For example, among 30,351 samples of raw cow’s milk collected by the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment from 18 dairy companies across 17 provinces between January 2014 and February 2015, the average protein content was (3.18 ± 0.14)% for large-scale farms, (3.07 ± 0.12)% for concentrated breeding zones, and (3.00 ± 0.14)% for individual smallholders.

Second, do we really need milk from large pastures with a higher nutritional value?

Milk is regarded by Chinese consumers as a highly nutritious food, particularly for its protein content. According to the Chinese Nutrition Society’s 2013 Dietary Reference Intakes for Chinese Residents, the recommended daily protein intake is 65 grams for adult men and 55 grams for adult women.

The 2016 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents, formulated by the Chinese Nutrition Society, recommends that each person consume at least 300 grams of milk and dairy products per day; the 2022 edition more specifically recommends 300–500 grams per person per day.

Smallholders’ milk has roughly 0.2 grams less protein per 100 grams of milk than milk from large pastures. Based on a daily intake of 500 grams of milk per person, the cumulative difference amounts to only about 1 gram of protein per day — negligible relative to the body’s daily protein requirement. As for other micronutrients, the differences are even more trivial.

Moreover, Chinese residents are not short of protein. In 2015, a survey covering 15 provinces and municipalities across the country found that among residents aged 18 to 64, the median protein intake was 68.5 grams per day for men and 57.9 grams per day for women — already above the Chinese Nutrition Society’s recommended intakes.

The Report on Nutrition and Chronic Disease Status of Chinese Residents, published in 2020, monitored the chronic disease and nutritional status of Chinese residents from 2015 to 2019, covering 31 provinces and municipalities, nearly 600 million people, with over 600,000 participants in the field survey. The report notes that protein, fat, and carbohydrate intakes among both urban and rural residents in China are currently adequate.

Therefore, given the current nutritional status of Chinese residents, there is no need to seek out milk from large pastures merely for a marginal nutritional gain.

 

Third, the nutritional quality of raw milk has nothing to do with the scale of the farm that produces it.

Today, the average scale of dairy farms in China far exceeds that in New Zealand, Australia, and EU countries. The latter all rely on small farms as the primary producers of raw milk. However, as the table above shows, these countries enforce higher nutritional standards for milk than China. This is sufficient to show that small-scale farms can produce milk of high nutritional value.

So why is the nutritional quality of smallholders’ milk in China lower? This has to do with dairy companies. Dairy companies pay higher prices for raw milk from large pastures than from small dairy farmers. Dairy companies also rate large-scale farms; the rating is linked on one end to feed quality and on the other to milk price. This incentivises large-scale farms to use high-quality feed, such as imported lucerne. Meanwhile, low milk prices limit smallholders’ investment in feed.

III. Summary

In summary, in terms of raw milk safety, large pastures are no better than small farms. Specifically, small farms were not the root cause of the melamine incident. Large pastures cannot guarantee the safety of raw milk at the production, distribution, and processing stages. The challenge of dairy quality regulation in China stems primarily from dairy companies’ exploitation of the farming side, rather than from the dispersion of dairy farming, and the current “large pastures + large dairy companies + top-down state regulation” model does not guarantee dairy safety.

In terms of raw milk nutrition, large pastures in China produce milk of higher nutritional value than small farms, but smallholders’ milk generally meets national standards. Chinese residents currently enjoy adequate nutrition, and there is no need to seek milk from large pastures for a marginal nutritional gain. The nutritional quality of raw milk also has no inherent link to farm size; small farms can just as well produce high-quality raw milk — the key is to put quality-based pricing into practice.

Author’s Note

For those interested in how small dairy farmers in China have been marginalised and how large pastures have risen, please see: Xiaojun Feng. 2025. Cost competition or power struggle? The exclusion of dairy farmers from raw milk production in China. The Journal of Peasant Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2025.2539842

References

[1] The Melamine Incident: A Key Turning Point for China’s Dairy Industry and Food Safety Regulation, 2024, https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2024-11-15/doc-incwaxxq9762101.shtml

[2] History of China’s Dairy Industry (Specialist History Volume), 2013, China Agricultural Publishing House, p. 336.

[3] National Dairy Development Plan (2016–2020), 2017, http://www.moa.gov.cn/nybgb/2017/dyiq/201712/t20171227_6129544.htm

[4] Zhong Yuting, Wang Jun. 2016. Survey on the Current Status of, and Factors Influencing, Protein Content in Raw Cow’s Milk in China. Chinese Journal of Food Hygiene.

[5] Comparative Analysis of Regulations and Key Testing Indicators for Milk and Dairy Products in China and Abroad. 2021. https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20210528103

[6] Chinese People Do Not Lack Protein. 2022. https://www.cdstm.cn/gallery/media/mkjx/xgbnysdw_6453/202205/t20220515_1069139.html

[7] Why Was the Recommended Intake of Milk and Dairy Products Increased in the Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)? https://www.news.cn/food/20220528/18cbfc0edd074ac2863e6b39f7e98af7/c.html

[8] Chinese People Do Not Lack Protein. 2022. https://www.cdstm.cn/gallery/media/mkjx/xgbnysdw_6453/202205/t20220515_1069139.html

Foodthink Contributors

Feng Xiaojun

Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at China Agricultural University; PhD, University of Oxford. Her main research interests are the sociology of labour and the sociology of agriculture.

 

 

 

 

Editor: Xiaodan