Essay on Factory Farms: Reasons for adopting a plant-based diet

What makes factory farms so unspeakably horrific is that all the animals are treated as though they are simply unfeeling ‘things’. Yet, as we now know, they are all capable of rich emotional lives. They know depression, frustration, boredom, fear, terror. All feel pain, including fish. You only have to watch calves gambolling in fields, cows standing together in the shade or lying and chewing their cud, pigs rootling in the grass or grunting in pleasure as they lie dozing in the mud, a hen, duck or goose leading her chicks from one place to another, calling to them when she finds food, to realise what the factory farm prisoners are deprived of.

 Factory Farming and the Environment: Impacts on the Planet

The environmental costs of factory farming—such as global warming, pollution, and diminished biodiversity—are too great for these facilities to continue dominating our food system.

 This Generation Won’t End Factory Farming – But The Next One Might

It can’t be denied that overall, people are more concerned than ever about the effects of their diets on animals and the environment. Over the last couple of decades, thanks in part to the mainstream penetration of books like “The Omnivore's Dilemma” and documentaries like “Cowspiracy,” it’s become more common knowledge that industrial animal agriculture is a significant culprit behind the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, and thus a major contributor to climate change. Factory farming also uses vastly more water and land than any other kind of food production. It’s hardly a secret that environmental experts believe a mass reduction in meat eating is one of the most important things we can do to protect the future of our planet.

 Why the media too often ignores the connection between climate change and meat

The tens of billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals we raise and slaughter for food annually account for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from cow burps, animal manure, and the fertilizer used to grow the corn and soy they eat. More than one-third of the Earth’s habitable land is used for animal farming — much of it cleared for cattle grazing and growing all that corn and soy — making animal agriculture the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss globally.

 Your Diet Is Cooking the Planet

And when you’re at the store, there is one dietary change to consider that beats all others in terms of its climate impact. It is not eating locally or seasonally. It is not eating organic or fair-trade. It is not eating unprocessed foods or avoiding big-box and fast-food retailers. It is eating less meat. Roughly three-quarters of the world’s farmland is used to pasture livestock or raise crops to feed that livestock. That contributes to deforestation, destroys the planet’s natural carbon sinks, erodes the planet’s biodiversity, and uses up fresh water.

Factory Farming: The Hidden Culprit of Cruelty and Climate Change

Despite growing momentum to hold some of the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters accountable for their role in climate change, factory-farmed meat and dairy continues to be let off the hook. But the situation for animals and the planet is getting more dire, and we cannot afford to keep giving factory farming a pass.

Factory farming: the real climate culprit

With the biggest meat and dairy companies’ climate impact now outweighing that of several developed nations1, there’s no bigger threat to the future of our planet than the expansion of factory farming.

Factory farms provide abundant food, but environment suffers

The animals and their waste have fouled waters. The enclosures spew air pollutants that promote climate change and are implicated in illnesses such as asthma. The stench of manure — stored in pits beneath barns or open-air lagoons and eventually spread on croplands as fertilizer — can make life miserable for people nearby.

Farmers, scientists seek solutions to global warming caused by cows

Across the country, there are more than 300 anaerobic digesters like the ones on the Crave Brothers dairy. They are helping farmers diversify their businesses while reducing planet-warming methane emissions. For dairies, about 43% of methane emissions come from manure.

Feeling the Heat: Factory Farming and Climate Change

Globally, animal agriculture represents 14.5% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, the massive feed-crop production and manure associated with factory farms—industrial facilities that raise large numbers of animals in intensive confinement—are significant contributors to air and water pollution as well as climate-warming emissions.

Five ways the meat on your plate is killing the planet

When we hear about the horrors of industrial livestock farming – the pollution, the waste, the miserable lives of billions of animals – it is hard not to feel a twinge of guilt and conclude that we should eat less meat. Yet most of us probably won’t. Instead, we will mumble something about meat being tasty, that “everyone” eats it, and that we only buy “grass fed” beef.

Food production generates more than a third of manmade greenhouse gas emissions – a new framework tells us how much comes from crops, countries and regions

Among animal-based foods, beef is the largest contributor to climate change. It generates 25% of total food emissions, followed by cow milk (8%) and pork (7%).

Humans have been messing with the climate for thousands of years

By clearing forests and raising animals, early farmers cranked up the global thermostat, possibly preventing another ice age.

Meat And Agriculture Are Worse For The Climate Than Power Generation, Steven Chu Says

The world has focused first on energy in its effort to stop greenhouse gas emissions, but former Energy Secretary Steven Chu puts agriculture at the top of his list of climate challenges—particularly animal agriculture.

Meat production leads to thousands of air quality-related deaths annually

Air pollution remains a major cause of death in the United States, one usually associated with tailpipe exhaust and factory and power plant smokestacks. Now new research shows that 16,000 U.S. deaths are the result of air polluted by growing and raising food—and 80 percent of those result from producing animal products like meat, dairy, and eggs.

Meat, monopolies, mega farms: how the US food system fuels climate crisis

From a beef-heavy diet to growing crops that don’t feed people – the biggest challenges facing the agriculture industry.

Methane emissions are driving climate change. Here’s how to reduce them

Agriculture is the predominant source. Livestock emissions – from manure and gastroenteric releases – account for roughly 32 per cent of human-caused methane emissions. Population growth, economic development and urban migration have stimulated unprecedented demand for animal protein and with the global population approaching 10 billion, this hunger is expected to increase by up to 70 per cent by 2050. Agricultural methane doesn’t only come from animals, though. Paddy rice cultivation – in which flooded fields prevent oxygen from penetrating the soil, creating ideal conditions for methane-emitting bacteria – accounts for another 8 per cent of human-linked emissions.

Moving cattle into the forest could help climate change, farmers and the livestock

Most grazing animals spend their time in open pastures. But there is a movement to raise livestock in the forest to benefit animals and the environment.

Pollution

Research shows that U.S. industrial livestock farms produce up to 1.37 billion tons of manure each year—that’s 20 times more fecal waste than the entire U.S. human population! This poses serious pollution risks to water resources and the air around us.

Replacing beef with chicken isn’t as good for the planet as you think

“If you’re worried about climate change, drop beef from your diet and replace it with chicken.” That’s the advice we’ve been hearing from some environmentalists and scientists for years — but it’s only half right. Sure, dropping beef is good for the climate. But if you really want to do what’s best for the Earth, it’s time to drop the chicken, too.

Time for US and EU to Regulate Factory Farms’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The factory farm system used by global agribusiness firms is a major source of the greenhouse gas methane.

To Combat Climate Change, We Can’t Ignore Agriculture

There’s no solution to climate change that does not include dramatic changes in how we produce and consume food. Livestock are directly responsible for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions through agricultural production. The leading source of agricultural emissions is methane from livestock (while cow farts are often blamed, the burps are the main culprit).

Will China’s Growing Appetite for Meat Undermine Its Efforts to Fight Climate Change?

But as the Chinese appetite for meat expands, the booming nation is faced with a quandary: How to satisfy the surging demand for meat without undermining the country’s commitment to curbing greenhouse gas emissions and combating global warming — goals that have been expressly incorporated into national economic, social development, and long-term planning under the Xi Jinping administration.