Livestock and Factory Farming

Factory Farming is a huge problem in terms of food security and GHG emissions

In terms of agricultural contribution to global warming, the farm animal production sector is the most instrumental in terms causing environmental damage on a global scale, contributing to soil degradation, decrease in water supplies, and most importantly the emission of greenhouse gases. Currently, the animal agricultural sector is responsible for approximately 18% of human-induced greenhouse emissions, which is more than all the greenhouse gases emitted from all the world’s transportation systems (cars, buses, airplanes, trains, etc.) combined (14% of total greenhouse gases emitted).

Livestock

The climate impacts of food (primarily meat and dairy products) are not in the public discourse very broadly in terms of its current and projected contributions to global warming. The environmental costs of intensive farming of animals for food (factory farming) is astronomical due to its fundamentality in which modern agriculture operates in response to current food demands by industrialized nations. To meet consumer demands, livestock are fed an enormous amount of calorically dense yet cheap food in order to get them to slaughter weight quickly and achieve high productivity. As expected, there are several major consequences associated with intensive factory farming and increased production of livestock. One consequence is the proportions of global anthropogenic emissions of the main greenhouse gases caused by the livestock sector – 37% of total CH4 emissions; 65% of total N2O emissions; 9% of total carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions and overall global warming potential arise from deforestation, followed by methane and carbon dioxide coming from manure, and from gases released from the animal’s digestive processes. Another important consequence caused by the livestock sector is the cultivation of land used for grain-feeding for livestock, which has increased exponentially due to rising demand for meat. This will result in further environmental consequences, such as CO2 loss from degraded soils, as well as fossil fuel usage for fertilizer production and harvesting

A visualization of the graph and further effects is shown below:

Repercussions of livestock factory farming and climate change on crop yields and food security

Soy and Maize

In the U.S., the demand for two main crops, soy and corn, has increased dramatically due to its frequent use as a filler and as a feed crop, creating what is known as a monoculture. Currently, these specific monoculture constitute around 50% of US farm acres, and play a huge role in adding to climate change. To put this in further perspective, 86 million acres of farmland are used to produce corn, in contrast to only 4.35 million acres that is used to produce all other known vegetables, thus reinforcing this principle of monocultures. Since soy and corn are intensively harvested and are applied with pesticides, they not only act as very poor carbon sinks, but additional fossil fuels are used in order to create these pesticides.