New category for Dairy Farmers vs Dairymen?

Question

Right now the only category I find for dairy farmers is "Dairymen". My problem has nothing to do with sexism (though I just added this to the profile of an 85-year-old woman who had solo-operated a 100-head dairy farm more than 26 years after her husband's death), it is that it is ambiguous.

The text and higher categories for "Dairymen" refer to dairy farmers, but the other more prominent meaning for Dairymen is one who works operates or works in a dairy. A dairy farm is a farming/animal husbandry operation raising cows whose product is raw milk. A dairy is a food processing operation which takes raw milk and produces milk products (various grades of homogenized liquid milk, cheeses, yogurt, etc.). In late modernity these occupations are rarely combined except in small artisanal operations or remote developing countries.

I would suggest adding Category: Food Processing and Transport Occupations, changing the text to clarify that's what it is for, then adding a new category "Dairy Farmers" parallel to the Dairymen category, and moving the farmers under Dairymen over to the Dairy Farmers category.

This seems pretty straightforward but there are thousands of profiles affected and a number of subcategories so I'm asking for feedback.

I would suggest keeping Dairymen around for those operating dairies or traditional integrated dairy operations that farm cows and market milk products directly.

Perhaps there should also be a "Dairy Workers" category for nonmanagerial employees of dairies, though "Dairymen" might be inclusive enough.

Answer 1

In England I have several cow keepers, men or women. My understanding is that these were not farmers, just kept a number of cows in towns, bought their feed in and then sold the milk around town themselves.

Comments

Throughout history and to the present households have kept a cow or two on subsistence basis to feed their families and make a little selling the excess, as with home gardening, until recently even in urban areas, e.g. Mrs. O'Leary's cow in Chicago, which may not have have started the 1871 fire but was definitely a cow belonging to a real Chicagoan.

The question here is about having a separate category for professional Dairy Farmers versus professional Dairymen who operate dairies. The distinction is modern; historical cheesemaking was be a separate profession but it took pasteurization, industrial bottling and later refrigeration to bring dairy to scale for perishable dairy products, beginning in the late 19th century. But I thought it is old enough to warrant a separate category, hence my question.

Answer 2

I agree that Dairy Farmer would be a better term to describe someone who operates a dairy farm. I'm not sure it solves the problem with "Dairymen", which can also be used to describe someone who sells raw milk or dairy products. You might also use the term "milk men" instead of dairymen. I can't think of a gender neutral term that would accurately describe them. I guess the question is how do you describe milk deliveries from the past that were referred to as milkmen or dairymen?

Comments

To present American vernacular "milkman" definitely invokes the old profession of milk home deliverymen, who would drop off bottles of milk from the dairy and pick up empties to return for cleaning and reuse. For that, if you really wanted to make it gender neutral I suppose it would be the present rather awful usage of "milk delivery person" or "milk delivery worker", but "milkmen" exists for that and is fine as far as I'm concerned.

I lean toward keeping "dairymen" for those who work in dairy plants, but "dairy workers" or more specifically "dairy plant workers" could lend more specificity.

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In Sweden "Dairyman" (or Dairywoman, though man is now used for both genders) is a person that works at a dairy (factory) not a farming position. it's also a qualified title. The position requires time of study and work practice. It is used for people in leading positions on the dairy factory floor, who lead teams of (unskilled) people who in the past were called "dairy assistant".

Answer 3

I agree that Dairy Farmers should be a separate category from ''Dairymen'', it's not the same occupation.  Dairymen to my mind would need to be changed, since indeed it's not limited to men, and several professions can fall under that header, like the dairy delivery people, small dairies that transformed milk without raising cows (or goats etc), and large dairies doing the same.  

I personally remember a dairy in my hometown where we would get cream that was really cream, none of this meager stuff one finds nowadays under the name.    It was a small business, supplied by surrounding farms.  Grew quite a bit over time, until it got swallowed by one of the big combines.

Comments

We've had those debates on men/women titles in Sweden, and at least in daily life we use the old gendered word, even if it is used on the other gender (nurse in Swedish is sjuksköterska - wich is a female term; a male form would be sjukskötare, but they are titled sjuksköterska).

The Swedish word for Dairyman (which is mejerist) is thus nowaday used for both genders though an elder form was Dairywoman (mejerska). So at least for Swedish situation the gendered word is not an issue.

What is an issue as well, is that Dairyman in Sweden is a title given to the person overseeing the work at the dairy, not the dairy worker. The "unskilled" dairy workers were usually called Dairy assistant (mejeribiträde).

Answer 4

In Sweden Dairyman (the Swedish translation mejerist) was indeed the person operating (or even owning) the dairy. Later the title was used to person overseeing the daily physical work at a dairy, like leading a shift (the title is still used).

But I'm lacking title for people who actually did the day-to-day work at the dairy, and were overseen by the Dairyman. The Swedish title would translate to Dairy Assistant (mejeribiträde). However, I'm only left with the choice of Milkmaid.