Editor’s note: This letter to the editor is in response to an editorial by Jennifer Kiel, co-editor of American Agriculturist, which appeared in the June issue and was online April 26. In short, the Cool Food Pledge encourages businesses to offer low-carbon menu items to encourage consumers to change their diets and slash food-related greenhouse gas emissions.

I am writing to you from beautiful Genesee County, N.Y., where my family has a dairy farm. As I read your article on the Cool Food Pledge, I shook my head at the cool food calculator and was very skeptical at the science and math of the calculations. I doubt these calculations take in the whole picture or are mindful of the impact this may have on a farm raising a non-vegetarian product.

Why do we keep beating up farmers, especially dairy farmers, when food waste is one of the largest contributors to methane production found in landfills, and landfills are the biggest contributors to methane production?

The dairy cow has taken quite a hit from the carbon police, and yet dairy farms are one of the biggest users of food waste, which keeps it out of landfills. We have a farm here in our county raising 4,000 dairy replacement heifers on food waste alone.

Look at some of the articles by Dr. Frank Mitloehner at University of California, Davis, champion of the dairy cow. Is it not time to stop these mindless challenges telling people what to eat and judging what they eat?

Food is now trucked, flown and boated into our country from all over the world; much of it is plant-based. I can now have fresh melons, peaches, cherries, berries and all kinds of summer vegetables all winter long. What kind of carbon footprint do these plants have? If we find that these have a huge carbon footprint, should we ban these from our grocery shelves and ban these farmers from an income?

Farmers are and always have been on the forefront of stewardship, and their story needs to be told and championed.

— Tess Zuber, Byron, N.Y.