Farmageddon summary

While factory farming is a relatively new form of food production, its devastating environmental effects have already been laid bare. For starters, it pollutes the water. That’s because industrial animal farms churn out tons of animal waste – that is, excrement – and all into one area.

For instance, a mega-dairy of 10,000 cows produces about as much fecal matter as a city the size of Miami, which contains 400,000 people. To put it another way, the mega-dairies of California, altogether produce as much waste as the entire population of the United Kingdom. That’s about 70 million people.

Now you know how factory farming is destroying the quality of our air and water, but you’re probably wondering what effect it has on local wildlife. Well, the destruction of animal habitats is another major consequence of industrial farming.

That’s because hedges and unplowed borders, which formerly divided fields in smaller farms and offered habitats for birds and bees, are obsolete in factory farms. As a result, between 1980 and 1994, 100,000 km of UK hedges vanished, along with the birds and insects that used to reside in them.

Our planet is largely composed of water and that water is home to millions of fish. But not all of them can be found in the wild depths of the ocean. In fact, many fish are farmed and live truly miserable lives.

Industrial fish farms are nothing like a fish’s natural environment: fish are crammed into jam-packed cages, sometimes 50,000 to a single enclosure. For example, trout are generally caged at a density of 60 kg of fish per cubic meter of water. To put it another way, that’s like putting 27, 12-inch long trout in a single bathtub.

So, it’s clear that factory farming is terrible for the environment, but doesn’t it at least save space?

Nope.

Everybody knows that oil and water are precious and diminishing resources. But did you know that factory farming is greatly accelerating the loss of both?

That’s because factory farming uses way too much water. As much as one-quarter of the world’s freshwater is used to produce meat and dairy. That’s because making a single kilogram of beef requires nearly 90 bathtubs of water.

OK, factory farming is wrecking the environment, taking up more space and burning precious resources. But at least it’s cheaper, right?

Well, not when you look at the big picture. Here’s why:

What about the effects that factory farming has on you, the consumer?

Unfortunately, factory-farmed meat is also bad for your health, because diseases flourish in the farms. After all, if you cram loads of animals into tight spaces, viruses and bacteria will thrive as they spread and evolve much more easily within a concentrated group of hosts. Not just that, but the immune systems of factory-farmed animals are also weak because of the atrocious conditions in which they live.

Did you know that we’re facing a worldwide food crisis?

The UN has estimated that to meet our needs in 2050, global food supplies need to increase by 70 to 100 percent.

Do you remember Dolly the Sheep? In 1996, she became the first mammal ever to be cloned from the cells of another. Now, cloning is touted as a route to producing super-animals and serious profits.

That’s because, while selective breeding can’t guarantee that the resulting offspring will be in as prime condition as their parents, cloning can. So, if you cloned a prize pig, the new hog would be just as prize-worthy.

China is home to over 1.3 billion people and they love to eat meat, especially pork – the average Chinese person eats about 34 kg of pork every year, compared to the 25 kg average for British people.

A few major Chinese food companies are seeing how profitable it is to raise pigs using industrial techniques. One of the biggest pig farmers in the country is Muyuan, based in Henan Province. Its goal is to raise 9 million pigs per year by 2017 and it’s using industrial techniques to meet it.

OK, given what we know about industrial agriculture, it’s clear that our methods of food production need to be transformed. But what’s the best and most sustainable way to meet humanity’s increasing food demands?

For starters, we need to cut back on food waste. Worldwide, an enormous amount of food is wasted every day. In fact, US consumers waste about 30 percent of the food they purchase. And globally, we waste the equivalent of 11,600 million chickens, 270 million pigs and 59 million cows a year!

Chances are, you’re a consumer like the vast majority of people. You’re also probably not a hugely influential politician or a fairy godmother. So, can a normal person do anything to change the way food is produced?

Absolutely. In fact, as a consumer, you wield tremendous power with the decisions that you make and the products you consume. That’s because retailers only stock what turns a profit. So, the more traditionally produced products you buy, the more demand you’ll create for them. This will make traditional farming more profitable and therefore more popular.