Industrial Agriculture is Far Worse than You Think

What is industrial agriculture?

Industrial agriculture is the intensive farming of live animals and crops for the mass production of food and food byproducts. For much of human history, agriculture relied on countless small farms to produce a wide variety of foods. But now, small independent and family-run farms use only 8% of all agricultural land. In just under a century, and especially since the 1960s, agriculture has become dominated by large-scale multinational corporations. Driven by profit, these food giants rely on practices that, by design, exploit and abuse animals, destroy natural habitats, and generate pollution and climate-changing emissions.

What led to the industrialization of agriculture?

In 1909, a scientific breakthrough by German chemist Fritz Haber—the "father of chemical warfare"—enabled the large-scale production of fertilizer (and explosives), igniting the industrialization of farming. Synthetic fertilizers, along with the development of chemical pesticides, allowed farmers to increase their crop yields (and their profits). Farmers began specializing in fewer crops, namely corn and soy, grown to feed farmed animals. Chickens became the first factory farmed animal when a farmer decided to try to raise ten times as many birds in a chicken house that was only built for 50. Other farmers followed suit.

Raising animals in close confinement led to the use of antibiotics, which had the side effect of promoting growth in animals. To increase yields and profits, farmers increased antibiotic use while also selectively breeding the animals that grew largest and fastest to produce consistently bigger animals. As production demands increased and the need for specialized labor grew, the slaughterhouse facilities which processed farmed animals for food became increasingly mechanized. In the 1930s, the first animals to suffer and die from mechanized slaughter were pigs. The breakneck revolutions in agriculture led to two types of farms: successful farms that grew larger and small farms that couldn't keep up.

What are examples of industrial agriculture?

Examples of industrial agriculture are CAFOs and monoculture crops.

What is a CAFO?

A CAFO, or "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation," is an industry term for an intensive, industrialized farm that breeds and imprisons thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—of animals for meat, dairy, and egg production. Outside of the animal agriculture industry, CAFOs are commonly known as factory farms.

Factory farms treat animals as commodities, keeping "livestock" in the smallest enclosures possible—such as battery cages and gestation crates—while also selectively breeding those same animals to grow unnaturally large as quickly as possible. Many animals, particularly chickens, grow too large for their own bodies and suffer painful leg injuries, bone deformities, and heart problems, among other health issues. As a result, these animals are forced to live in chronic pain.

Industrial farms notorious for these and other pervasive abuses, including standard industry practices designed to mutilate animals, such as dehorning, debeaking, tail docking and castration. All of these procedures are generally performed with zero anesthesia, subjecting animals to excruciating pain and trauma.

These farms also rarely invest in proper veterinary care or medical treatment beyond the bare minimum standards required by law, leaving sick or injured animals to languish on filthy concrete floors or at the bottom of battery cages, sometimes unable to move. Proper medicine and care would require time and money—two things that factory farms refuse to spend on the animals who live within their confines. Above all else, the goal of each CAFO is to maximize profits.

What is monoculture?

Monoculture, or monocropping, is the industrial practice of growing only a single crop on a large area of land. While this methodology can increase production and profits, monocropping has other costs.

In nature, biodiversity cultivates a balanced ecosystem, ensuring that no one species overpopulates while others vanish. This not only means the animals and plants we can see, but also those we can't, as biodiversity allows a healthy range of microorganisms to thrive in—and organically enrich—the soil. Monoculture is the opposite of biodiversity.

To compensate for the damage done by monocropping, industrial agriculture relies on the use of harsh chemical fertilizers, as well as herbicides and insecticides, all of which only further damage the soil, as well as groundwater.

Why is industrial agriculture bad?

Industrial agriculture is a leading cause of human-related emissions fueling climate change, a major source of both water and air pollution, and the principal cause of antibiotic resistance and pesticide toxicity.

Industrial agriculture and climate change

Industrial meat and dairy production generates at least 60% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The numbers get uglier when you consider that beef is the number one cause of deforestation in the Amazon—the world's largest rainforest. Deforestation is now the third largest source of emissions. The beef industry is also the leading cause of methane emissions, and methane is 86 times more potent at heating the atmosphere than CO2.

Industrial agriculture and air pollution

Agriculture produces more fine-particulate air pollution than any other industry worldwide. Methane and ammonia fumes from animal waste and fertilizers combine in the air with other industrial emissions to form toxic particulate matter. When inhaled, these particulates can lead to heart or pulmonary disease.

Industrial agriculture and water pollution

In only a single year, and just in the US alone, factory farms produce 1.4 billion tons of manure—five times the waste of the entire US human population. Unlike human waste, which is routed through sewer systems to sewage treatment plants, farmed animal waste is collected in vast sewage lagoons that seep into and contaminate local groundwater. To keep those lagoons from overflowing, farmers are allowed to use industrial irrigation to disperse untreated waste on surrounding land—and on local residents.

Farmed animal manure is also a key ingredient in fertilizers used in monocropping. Along with pesticides and herbicides, these industrial fertilizers seep into and contaminate local groundwater with nitrates that are toxic, especially to babies, who can develop and die from "blue baby syndrome." In adults, nitrate-heavy water has also been linked to colorectal cancer and thyroid disease.

Industrial agriculture and pesticide toxicity

Half of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture, and 77% of that land is used for animal agriculture. In the United States alone, crops grown for animal feed are sprayed with 235 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides in a single year. As demand for meat and dairy escalates, so does the use of industrial poisons.

Like fertilizer and animal waste, pesticides and herbicides contaminate soil and groundwater. Instead of just killing "pests" and weeds, these chemicals can kill wildlife, birds, fish, beneficial insects like butterflies and bees, and—yes—even people.

Industrial agriculture and antibiotic resistance

Bacteria and other pathogens, like all forms of life, are naturally inclined to adapt and survive. The more a bacteria is exposed to an antibiotic, the more ineffective that antibiotic becomes. This is how bacteria frequently grow immune to antibiotics that were once highly effective, and why antibiotics are already becoming useless.

Yet, on factory farms, overuse of antibiotics is standard industry practice. Animals are routinely given antibiotics to treat illnesses they don't have. The intent is to prevent outbreaks—which wouldn't be as inevitable to begin with if thousands of animals weren't kept in crushing confinement, if the stress of being farmed didn't compromise the animals' immature immune systems, and if selective breeding hadn't made all those animals nearly genetically identical.

Because industrial farming values profit over animal welfare and human health, every single factory farm is an incubator for future pandemics.

The hidden costs of industrial agriculture

Prices on grocery shelves never hint at the true costs people ultimately pay for industrialized food, like millions of taxpayer dollars spent on environmental cleanup and remediation.

Animal waste and fertilizers relentlessly contaminate the air and drinking water everyone breathes and drinks. Combatting "nutrient pollution" is an ongoing battle that's been left to the taxpayer-funded Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—to the tune of $157 billion a year. Yet, that already-staggering number is likely low, as the EPA routinely fails to closely monitor waste and pollution from CAFOs.

Industrial waste and fertilizer runoff also poisons large bodies of water near coastlines. Nitrogen-rich water can fuel an overpopulation of algae, creating toxic "red tide" that kills fish and other marine life, as well as people. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus change also lowers the oxygen levels of the ocean, turning the water hypoxic and creating a dead zone where no living creature can survive. While many algal blooms are temporary, some dead zones have become annual events. In 2021, the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone was larger than usual. The economic impacts of red tides and dead zones are $82 million a year.

Social and economic impacts

As giant food corporations have taken over the agriculture industry, small family and mid-size farms are either forced to sell or driven out of business. Whenever this happens, the local economy loses jobs and money. As less money is spent and reinvested locally, other "main street" staples struggle or go out of business.

Damage to farmland and rural communities

In areas where multinational food conglomerates dominate, the environmental impacts of industrial agriculture take their biggest toll. Perhaps unsurprisingly, farmworkers and their families are the most affected from direct exposure to pesticides, as well as water and air pollution. Despite the health risks, most farmworkers employed by these large corporations aren't offered health insurance or salaries that might help change their economic status. For those most likely to get sick or even deathly ill from exposure to industrial toxins, missed work and medical debt becomes an exponentially greater financial burden.

Industrial agriculture statistics

• 1 in 10 people on Earth is undernourished, even though there's more than enough food produced to feed the world.
• Only 6% of soy is grown to produce plant-based foods like soy milk, tofu, tempeh and edamame. The vast majority of soy is grown for animal feed.
• 60% of all mammals on Earth are factory farmed cows, pigs, and chickens.
• 80% of antibiotics are sold for use in animal agriculture.
• 700,000 people die of antibiotic-resistant infections each year—and that number is growing fast.
• 1.5 million people die from water pollution each year. Another 1 billion people are made sick by tainted water.
• 3.3 million people die each year as a result of air pollution from industrial animal waste and fertilizer.
• 200 million land animals are killed around the world each day. That's over 18 billion animals a year.

What are the alternatives to industrial agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture is an alternative philosophy to farming that aims not only to nourish people but nourish soil in effort to restore natural ecosystems. While this growing movement has no strict rulebook, common goals include reducing emissions, eliminating fertilizers and pesticides, growing varieties of plants together, and nurturing local communities.

However, while the philosophy gets a lot of things right, many of its proponents also believe they can have their steak and eat it, too. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Animal agriculture already dominates over 33% of habitable land on our planet and most of that—a full 26% of habitable land—is used solely for livestock grazing. Regenerative ranching proposes that cattle be allowed to roam and graze free, but free-range grass-fed cattle require 2.5 times more land than factory farmed cattle. In other words, to maintain the same level of beef production, regenerative ranching would require an absurd 65% of habitable land. That's not just unsustainable—it's unlivable.

But, thankfully, there's an antidote to the destruction caused by factory farming. When we support sustainable agriculture practices that save water, protect soil health, and reduce pollution—such as plant-based permaculture and agroforestry—we have the potential to fix our broken food system for good.

What you can do

Whether it's land used for grazing or to grow feed crops, the vast majority of industrial agriculture is animal agriculture.

If everyone on the planet switched to a plant-based lifestyle, we'd virtually eliminate the worst threats to our environment and still produce more than enough food to feed every person on the planet. Not only that, but we'd reduce the land needed for agriculture by an incredible 75%, which would allow the soil and ecosystems in vast expanses of land to regenerate naturally.

Join us in healing the planet by starting your plant-based journey today.