What is the environmental impact of animal agriculture and why do we need to move away from factory farming?
The food we eat has a huge impact on our carbon footprint and on the environment.
Factory farming - a system of rearing livestock using highly intensive methods - is killing the planet as well as animals. Animal agriculture depletes our Earth of vital resources, including fresh water, forests, and biodiversity. In turn, it pumps out toxic greenhouse gases, water pollutants, and a host of dangerous byproducts.
In 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations described livestock farming as:
one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems.
Here’s why.
How does factory farming cause air pollution?
Long haul flights and fossil fuels have been named and shamed as the worst things going for our planet. But more and more research by major players like The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation is suggesting that animal agriculture is the true culprit.
Factory farming is a key contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, which warm our atmosphere and cause climate change.
According to the United Nations, the animal agriculture industry creates more greenhouse gases than the global transportation industry. Cows, pigs, and other livestock across Europe are producing more of these planet-warming gases per year than all of Europe’s cars and vans combined.
The livestock industry is even responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the world’s biggest oil companies.
Carbon dioxide is a byproduct throughout all stages of factory farming - from the carbon released when trees are cut down to make room for growing livestock feed, to the high levels of energy needed to light, heat, and ventilate industrial farms. Because of this, factory-farmed beef requires twice as much fossil fuel energy input as pasture-reared beef (Pimentel).
Factory farming is also responsible for 37 percent of methane emissions, a gas 20 times more damaging for global warming than carbon dioxide, and 65 percent of the world’s harmful nitrous oxide emissions.
Factory farming’s impact on water use and pollution
Industrial agriculture is responsible for using a whopping 70 percent of the world’s freshwater supplies. For every meat burger skipped, an individual can save enough water to shower with for the next 3.5 weeks.
In 2010, the United Nations said:
The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilisers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops.
With a high output of animal waste, factory farms require industrial-sized cesspools. Nitrates, dangerous microbes, and drug-resistant bacteria are rife in these ‘lagoons,’ which have been known to seep into nearby waterways.
When this happens, toxic algae blooms are formed, leading to ‘dead zones’ - areas where wildlife is wiped out. In 2017, toxins from factory farms runoff resulted in the largest dead zone in US history in the Gulf of Mexico.
The risk to human health is high, too. If these high levels of nitrates, bacteria and pathogens such as E.coli contaminate drinking water, we can become ill.
How does factory farming cause deforestation?
To feed the billions of animals raised in factory farms, a lot of crops are needed.
Around one third of the world’s croplands are used to grow animal feed, and between 1980 and 2000, an area over 25 times the size of the UK was formed in the developing world to make more room for this. Over 10 percent of this was at the cost of tropical forests.
Why does this matter? Our forests are the ‘lungs of the planet’ and absorb carbon dioxide, as well as stabilising climate, producing vital rainfall across the globe, and homing incredible plants and animals.
Throughout South America, vast areas of forest are cleared to grow crops like soya, which will be turned into feed for animals like chickens, cows and pigs.
In the Amazon alone, 100 million hectares of forest (that’s about the size of forty million football fields!) have been cleared for soybeans, releasing enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to increase the rate of global warming by 50 percent.
These levels of deforestation are a disaster for the climate, and for native species who are being forced into extinction. Among the animals currently endangered and at risk of disappearing altogether are the jaguar, tapir, giant otter, and many species of monkey.
Why factory farming is bad for land use and monocultures
Without meat and dairy consumption, humans could use around 75 percent less land for agriculture - equivalent in size to the US, China, Australia, and all of the EU combined. That’s a lot of land that we could reclaim and use in a more sustainable, kinder way for the planet, for humans and for animals.
Monocultures are areas where a single crop dominates the land - for example, where forests and the diverse range of plant and animal life in them are removed and replaced with corn, wheat, rice or soybeans.
Animal agriculture depends on these monocultures. To feed livestock, a small selection of ‘commodity’ crops are now grown on the majority of the world’s agricultural land. Argentina is the largest producer of soybeans, but nearly 97 percent of soymeal exported by Argentina is not used to nourish humans. Only about six percent of the world’s soybeans are directly used to feed people, rather than animals.
By replacing native plants and diverse crop fields with millions of acres of a single crop, humans deplete soil of natural minerals and nutrients. Synthetic fertilisers and pesticides are then needed to maintain constant growth cycles of the single crop. These chemicals contribute to air and water pollution, and are known to accelerate climate change.
Monocultures also have more direct, localised impacts on the environment. For example, corn - native to North America - now occupies 90 percent of cultivated land in Malawi, and has been planted across East Africa. Corn crops require a lot of water, and are vulnerable to droughts, common in these regions. By swapping out native crops, which are able to withstand regional weather conditions with monocultures, famine is sadly more likely.
How can I help the environment?
It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom: by protecting animals, we can protect the planet too.
Researchers say that going plant-based is the “single biggest way” an individual can minimise their impact on the environment. Cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could decrease your carbon footprint from food by a monumental 73 percent. Even reducing your intake of animal products can make a difference.
As an individual, you can make informed choices about the foods and drink you consume, and opt for locally sourced plant-based options wherever you can. Together, we can dismantle factory farming, and give our planet a better chance of survival.
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