Toppling a titan: Can we really beat factory farming?

5 minute read - October 7th 2024

The fight to fix factory farming and bring about a kinder food system is often described as a ‘David and Goliath’ struggle: A small movement, on the right side of history, trying to topple a giant industry that aims to squash it.

But the thing is.. in that story, David wins.

Are we winning? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. One fact, in particular, makes it hard to feel like we're on the winning team:

The bad news: Goliath is growing

If you look at graphs relating to factory farming over time, they all trend in the wrong direction. Consider these sobering statistics:

• Over the past decade alone, the number of land animals raised for food grew by almost 9%

• The amount of farmed seafood grew 54%.

• It’s not just a reflection of the growing human population either — over the past decade, per capita meat consumption has increased 5%.

The growth in production mightn’t concern us so much if it weren’t for the fact that production is becoming more intensified (i.e. looking more and more like what we’d all call “factory farming”) in regions like Africa and Asia.

To add insult to injury, Goliath is expanding to new dystopian frontiers, like insect farming, which brings a host of new problems while expanding the scope of existing issues.

Yay 🎉 🤪

Why did we choose this metaphor again? Ah yes.. I remember:"

The good news: David’s doing damage

There is good news.. surprisingly — or, to keep the biblical metaphor going, “miraculously” — good news: Despite how out-muscled and out-resourced little David is, we continue to land big blows against Goliath, armed with nothing but a sling and some stones.

Consider some of the recent wins against factory farming:

• Passed the milestone of 40% of eggs in the US being from cage-free systems (up from 4% in just 15 years)

• Achieved a ban on Octopus farming (which scientists believe cannot be farmed humanely) in Washington, with a bill proposing a national ban currently in the senate

• Reached approval for the first sales of cultivated meat in the US, promising a way to produce animal products without intensive farming

• Secured a billion dollars in government investment into developing alternative proteins

Even the fact that the term “factory farming” has been successfully popularized to describe the worst forms of animal agriculture is a massive win, helping to mobilize broad opposition to the issue.

Also, Goliath has a key weakness: Most people, on some level, know that things need to change. For example, one survey found that 49% of Americans agree with the statement, “I support a ban on the factory farming of animals”.

So we’ve hit Goliath in the eye, but he’s still standing — and growing. Something is clearly wrong with the metaphor.

A reality check

The David versus Goliath metaphor, while evocative, dramatically undersells the challenge. The metaphor evokes a brave underdog facing a far larger, but still roughly human-sized opponent. Our Goliath makes the biblical one look easy:

If David, representing the organizations working to end factory farming with a totally annual budget of $220M, were the size of an average human, then Goliath, the $2.3 trillion dollar industry, would be more than 10,000 times taller. The top half of Goliath’s body would reach beyond the earth’s atmosphere into out of space.

So when we imagine our David and Goliath struggle, it’s less of a face-off between two different-sized people and much more like a face-off between a human and an ant.

But we can still win

We know that David’s sling works against Goliath, but the dude needs more stones!

If we can grow the amount of resources available for organizations working to reform the food system, we can scale up the tactics we know are working, and we can invest in a pipeline of new tactics so that when the sling starts to hit diminishing returns, we can hit Goliath with the chair instead.

That’s where FarmKind comes in. Our role is to help anyone rooting for David to find and fund some of the best charities working to fix factory farming. As an individual, donating even small amounts of money to the charities that punch well above their weight can help thousands of animals.

If you want to make an extraordinary difference for animals, but aren’t able to donate much yourself, you could try our new fundraiser feature.

Remember: Whilst each individual donation might feel like it makes no progress towards the big picture goal, it makes a big difference to the many real animals that our recommended charities help. Plus, together, our donations add up to achieve the big wins we’ve accomplished. Together, what seems like an impossible task becomes an achievable goal.