The meat and dairy industries have always been at the
forefront of agriculture. It is hard to ignore the ways in which farming
animals has shaped our society and culture, for thousands of years. As
populations have boomed in the last two hundred years, from 1.2
billion in 1850 to almost 7.8
billion in 2020, we have had to change the ways we produce food. Factory
farming methods were adopted
by many countries after the second world war, to aid in economic recovery
and reduce the reliance on imported goods.
Factory farming is the idea of maximising production, while minimising production costs, with little concern for animal welfare. This was made possible with the discovery of vitamins and their role in animal nutrition, and the discovery of antibiotics and vaccines which facilitated raising livestock in larger numbers by reducing risk of disease. Chemicals developed for use in the second world war established the rise of synthetic pesticides, and developments in shipping networks and technology facilitated long-distance distribution for produce. In order to support a booming population, global agriculture production doubled four times between 1820 and 1975 (the first doubling took 100 years, the last took 10 years). Combining pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. How can we sustain such growth, with finite land? What is the environmental cost?
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| Source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture |
The biggest food lie that has been instilled into our
society is that we get most of our nourishment from meat and dairy. While
livestock uses up most of the world’s agricultural land, it only produces 18% of the world’s
calories and 37% of total protein. That means we get 82% of our
calories and 63% of our protein from plant-based food, a damning and
hard-to-justify statistic for meat and dairy lovers, and for the meat and dairy
industries that hold
massive social and political power.
Livestock farming has a vast environmental footprint. It
contributes to biodiversity loss, land and water degradation, acid rain, coral
reef degeneration and deforestation. 18% of
human-produced greenhouse gas emissions are produced from animal
agriculture, more than all emissions from ships, planes, trucks, cars and all
other transport put
together. Reducing consumption of animal products is essential if we are to
meet global greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, necessary to mitigate the
worst effects of the climate crisis.
There is a finite amount of farmable land in the world. When
so much of it is used not to feed people, but to feed the animals that feed a
small amount of us, we must ask ourselves how much energy is lost? If all grain
were fed to humans instead of animals, we could feed
an extra 3.5 billion people. With a world population that is projected to
reach nearly 10
billion in 2050, is this the most effective and sustainable use of land and
production?
In an advanced society, we no longer need sustenance from animals.
It is increasingly hard to justify the contrary. It not only induces great
suffering onto other sentient beings, but contributes significantly to the
catastrophic climate crisis.
Further reading –
https://www.iatp.org/milking-planet
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan/dairy-industry
https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production
http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm