Causes Of Industrialized Farming

In the article,” Why Bother” written by Michael Pollen, he explains how the environment has gotten very bad over time. He talks about sustainability, global warming, and the cheap-energy mind in his article. He tells us that we need to act now before the phenomenon gets worse. Have you paid attention to the environment lately? Have you noticed the rising temperature around the world? Have you noticed the melting of the ice caps? If you haven’t you are about to be in for a surprise. The world has gotten very bad and we need to act now. There are a lot of causes to the environmental problems. The main cause are from farmers all around the world. Farmers are a lot more technologically advanced then what they were 50 years ago compared to now. The problem with the farmers are the overuse of energy, erosion of the soil, and pollution. The answer to all of these problems is sustainable agriculture because it is more efficient and better for the environment.

Methane has a global warming potential 20 times higher than carbon dioxide. ”("5 Ways Factory Farming Is Killing the Environment.") The farms are a threat to the very planet we live on.

cutting down forests in Brazil, as well as setting wildfires in places like west Texas cause “carbons stored in trees” to escape. Individuals don't understand that in places like “Brazil,” deforestation causes more emissions than “all of the world's cars.” There are other forms of greenhouse gases as well; like “Methane” released from “Rice Farming, Petroleum drilling, and even cattle bleaching” (Friedman 35). Over “10 Billion” animals are raised for Factory Farms in the United states. Burning Fossil Fuels for fertilizer creates up to “41 million metric tons” of Carbon Dioxide. The Factory Farm industry contributes to air pollution by emitting Greenhouse Gases such as “Hydrogen Sulfide, Ammonia and Methane” (DoSomething Web). Factory Farms is something that can easily be changed by switching to smaller meat establishments, where the common public already expects the meat to come from.

3). This waste is not effectively disposed, and has a very negative impact on the environment surrounding the plant (para. 4). The animals themselves aren't the only ones producing pollutants, the “chemical fertilizers and pesticides” used in factory farms have “turned agriculture into a leading source of water pollution,” (para. 8). L. Baroni, of the Department of Neurorehabilitation at Villa Salus Hospital, et al., concluded that a diet higher in animal products is more detrimental to the environment than one absent of them (282). This is expounded upon by a report by the EPA that estimated that “animal agriculture” has polluted over 35,000 miles of American river (Sustainable Table para. 20). While the world's rivers, lakes, and oceans become more and more polluted, it becomes apparent how irresponsible it is to support the meat-industry by buying their packaged flesh, because, as demand for meat increases with the world's growing population and waist-line, so will the harmful emissions and slurry produced by these “farms.”

Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change; however, this fact goes unacknowledged by most people. Livestock and their byproducts produce monstrous amounts

Chicken, lamb, turkey, milk, pork, eggs, fish, etc., all contribute to the environmental problems facing the planet. The fossil-fuel energy consumption to protein output for these livestock are as follows: chicken has a 4:1 ration, lamb 50:1, turkey 13:1, milk protein 14:1, pork 17:1, and eggs at a 26:1 ratio. This averages out to almost eight-times more “fossil-fuel energy than production of plant protein” (Pimentel). In addition, each animal has its own benefits and downfalls. Pigs propose a lower carbon footprint but if raised in ideal free-range environments they can pollute the soil with nitrogen (Goffman 5). Chickens pose the threat of spreading bacteria through rivers and streams and spurring algal growth which create “dead zones”,

The excess of carbon in the atmosphere is the cause of global climate change. To reverse global warming we must balance the carbon cycle by removing carbon from the atmosphere and returning it to the plants and to the soil (4). Though in the end, carbon exists in everything and the carbon cycle is much more complex because it includes every plant, animal, microbe, fallen tree, body of water, bit of soil, breath of air, plume of smoke, combustion of fossil fuel, decaying particle, and bubble popping to the surface of a swamp (5). Industrial farming has disrupted this cycle. If we completely halted the burning of fossil fuels today, which we can not by any means, climate change would still continue through modern agriculture. The key to reversing global warming is not solely through solar panels and ethanol fuel, but in proper symbiotic farming

What most people will find surprising is the fact that the industrialized agricultural and food systems is a great contributor to global warming, as its carbon emission are increasing year after year. This is something that the general public is unaware of. There are several statistics that shows the grand scale of damage that this

Research shows that two of the major human-caused climate change attributers are factory farms and burning of fossil fuels. Factory farms are a big controversy for climate change because of the byproducts created in everyday production. My uncles who run a small to medium scale farm operation believe that farming doesn't have a very big impact on global climate change. Scientists and environmentalists believe that animals crammed together on large farms produce too much manure and methane, and that's causing a negative effect on the climate. My uncles didn't believe this because most farmers take good care of their farms and use manure in a safe and secure manner to help fertilize their crops from the natural cycles from animals. Fossil fuels

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that Americans like their meat. In fact, America produced 93 billion pounds of meat and poultry in 2012, which included some 32 million cattle. As many of us already know, agriculture has a significant impact on our environment in a variety of ways. In order to successfully rear livestock, slaughterhouses require large quantities of water, and emit plenty of greenhouse gases – methane and CO2 specially – during production.

Both the Humane Society of the United States and the Environmental Integrity Project have petitioned for factory farms to be included under the Clean Air Act due to the heavy amounts of air pollution that have harmed the environment as well as threatened the health of the nearby residents (“Coalition Sues” 2015). If these agricultural establishments were included in the Clean Air Act, it would help control and decrease the amount of air pollution generated by CAFOs by setting a finite limit of emissions the factories are permitted to produce per year (“Summary of the Clean Air Act” 2015). When reducing the amount of methane emissions in the atmosphere, the levels go down quickly and within decades, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions from machines takes close to one hundred years before any effects are seen (Andersen 2014). Over the years, a collection of people and organizations have taken a stand against pollution from factory farms through petitioning and advocating for change.

Because human activities and the environment are inter-related, any activity that man does in it’s environment can affect man or the environment in a positive or negative way. Most negative effects on the environment arise from economic or domestic activities, like building homes, businesses, and farms. Traditional farming methods usually give back to the earth what is taken from it. For example, nutrients are placed back into the soil in the form of fertilizers. On most small scale farms, this is what is still practiced. The issue is that industrial agriculture has brought upon methods of farming that are not sustainable. Industrial farming is a way of producing

The possibility of our planet Earth coming to an end is coming faster than expected. There are theories, documents, and myths about this unrealistic phenomenon that can come true if actions aren’t being taken. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “The majority of American farmland in modern society is dominated by industrial agriculture – the system of chemically intensive food production developed in the decades after World War II, managing single-crop farms and animal production facilities”(1). The main source and reason why factory farms are active today is because the government’s permission to use corn to feed animals and produce crops. Subsiding corn came about two decades because the high demand for food was increasing and corn is cheaper to use to produce food such as meat and crops. With the practices of using corn in everything that we eat and make came with consequences. One of the consequences of factory farming is the endangerment of our environment. Our environment is very important to us because without it, our Earth will be nothing, but a planet of pure pollution. Society’s demands of food for affordable prices has taken a toll on the environment as we used fossil fuel, not becoming responsible for animal waste being dispose, and regulations not being implemented. However, solutions to saving our environment from the biggest problem of all, global warming, can be solve by eliminating fossil fuels, recycle the wastes and using it to make

Current conventional farming practices are also responsible for many pollution problems that would not exist otherwise. The land where we live and grow our food, the water we drink, and the air we breathe are all being contaminated. The large amounts of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers used on our crops are poisoning the soil, air, and water. Toxic heavy metals such

Factory Farming pollutes nature and causes it to disappear, causing human beings and animals to become ill and even genetics to change. If Factory Farmers do not follow the law, the world is heavily impacted and even the ecosystem may collapse. If mankind is looking for a solution, it must take very serious laws that pollute the environment. But the lobby of Factory Farms does not allow it. The best solution is to remove the factory farms and install natural farms