Farming is broken: Let’s fix it. Part 2 - The Planet

8 minute read — Published 22nd May, 2024

Factory Farming is Destroying the Planet

Factory farming is a broken system: torturing animals, destroying the planet and putting our lives at risk.

Despite this, it remains the dominant system for producing meat, dairy, and eggs. In the USA, 99% of the meat we eat is factory farmed;¹ while in the UK roughly 73 - 85% of farmed animals live in factory farms.²

In this series, we explore the many harms of factory farming and some of the ways that we can, together, make farming kinder to people, the planet and animals.

In the first article, we explored the little-known impacts of factory farming on our health, global hunger and its workers. In this second article, we look at the way that factory farming directly contributes to the climate emergency and what we can do about it.

Climate Change

Factory farming is a major driver of climate change, contributing around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions³ — more than the entire transportation sector. Livestock, particularly cattle, produce significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Rearing cattle generates more greenhouse gasses than driving cars,⁴ with beef production over 110 times more emissions-intensive than plant-based protein sources like peas.⁵ If we don’t change our ways, our quest for cheap meat might just roast the planet.

Source: Our World in Data

Many people try buying their food locally to reduce the impact on the planet, but this has only a very small effect. 88% of emissions from animal products are generated on-farm,⁶ before they are transported to the supermarket. Overall transport accounts for less than 0.5% of the emissions from beef,⁷ for example.

Just avoiding the worst climate culprits like beef isn’t a real solution either, as factory farmed products are just as bad when you consider their impacts on the planet holistically, which we’ll discuss next.

Environmental Pollution

Factory farms are environmental juggernauts, generating colossal amounts of waste that wreak havoc on local ecosystems. US factory farms produce 13 times the sewage of the entire human population of the USA alone,⁸ storing it in open or covered pits or massive lagoons. These lagoons leak sewage and contaminate the surrounding land, air, and waterways at rates far beyond what nearby farmland can absorb. This leads to severe public health and ecological hazards, degrading both surface and groundwater resources.

Picture an ocean where nothing lives—a dead zone—created by the runoff from factory farms. This pollution, laden with manure, chemicals, antibiotics, and growth hormones, causes eutrophication in water bodies, a process that depletes oxygen and devastates aquatic life. The United Nations has highlighted the major role industrial farming plays in this environmental disaster, releasing large volumes of harmful substances into water sources.⁹

The scale of pollution is staggering. Dairy production is 31 times more damaging per unit of protein than plant-based staples, while farmed prawns and fish are 26 and 13 times worse, respectively.¹⁰ Even the air we breathe isn't spared, as beef production is 51 times more harmful in terms of acidic air pollution than tofu, with cheese, pork, lamb, shrimp, and chicken ranging from 15 to 25 times worse.¹¹ Factory farming's impact is a stark testament to our negligence, underscoring the urgent need for more sustainable agricultural practices.

Resource Inefficiency

Factory farming is a colossal drain on our planet's limited resources, using land with shocking inefficiency. Almost half the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture¹² and a staggering 80% of that land is used for animal products which contribute a mere 37% of the world's protein supply and just 17% of global calories.¹³ This disproportionate use of land resources reveals the inefficiency of our current food system, particularly when considering that beef and lamb require 50 times more land per unit of protein than plant-based sources like peas.¹⁴

The environmental cost of this inefficiency is immense, with factory farming emerging as the biggest driver of deforestation. Our relentless appetite for meat is decimating the lungs of our planet, as forests are razed to create pastures and grow feed crops. Pasture expansion for beef alone accounts for over 40% of deforestation,¹⁵ while cropland expansion for soybeans and palm oil—primarily used to feed chickens and pigs—drives an additional 18%.¹⁶ These impacts are so vast they can be seen from space, with NASA noting that cattle pastures have caused about five times more deforestation than any other commodities.¹⁷

This inefficient use of land not only contributes to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss but also undermines efforts to combat climate change. As we clear forests to satisfy our demand for animal products, we are sacrificing the very ecosystems that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. To truly address the environmental crises we face, we must rethink our agricultural practices and shift towards more sustainable, plant-based food systems.

Ocean depletion

For years, we've been warned about the devastating impact of overfishing on ocean ecosystems. Over one-third of the world's fish resources are being depleted beyond their ability to recover, and the scope of this issue has doubled since 1990.¹⁸ One fishing method, known as 'bottom trawling,' has become particularly infamous for its destructiveness. It kills 41% of organisms in ecosystems, and those ecosystems take up to six years to recover.¹⁹ Despite everything we know about bottom trawling, it is still used to catch a quarter of the world's fish,²⁰ with 13.5% of the shallow seabed being trawled every single year.²¹

When fish farming began to scale up in the late 1990s, some hoped it would be a solution to the problems caused by the wild seafood industry. Sadly, it’s not a real solution.

Firstly, we still catch billions of ocean fish to feed the farmed fish. In fact, an estimated 40% of wild-caught fish are fed to farmed fish today. 440 wild fish need to be caught to feed each farmed salmon.²² Secondly, fish farming in sea cages wreaks havoc on sensitive coastal ecosystems by polluting them with antibiotics, pesticides, and eutrophication (the creation of deadzones by nutrient pollution).²³ So as it stands, neither wild caught seafood nor high-tech fish farms are as natural or kind to the planet as we’d like them to be.

Biodiversity: The Ultimate Measure of Environmental Health

Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history.²⁴ Scientists warn that we are currently experiencing the sixth mass extinction event.²⁵ The last mass extinction saw the last of the dinosaurs die out.²⁶

The primary drivers of this crisis include deforestation, ocean depletion, and environmental pollution – all linked to our current farming practices. The Amazon rainforest, one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, has seen 20% of its area cleared for agriculture.²⁷

In fact, the industrialisation of animal farming and the decline of wild ecosystems has left us in a world where farmed mammals (like cows and pigs) make up 94% of the total weight of non-human mammals, and the total weight of farmed birds is more than double that of all the Earth’s wild birds put together.²⁸ This loss of biodiversity highlights the urgency with which we need to reform our food system to protect and restore the planet's natural balance.

Farming is broken, let’s fix it

Despite the daunting challenges posed by factory farming, there is a hopeful path forward. Transitioning away from animal agriculture could offset 68% of emissions through to 2100, with 90% of this benefit coming from phasing out cows, sheep, and dairy.²⁹ Remarkably, some plant-based protein sources, such as certain nuts, are already carbon-negative, actively reducing atmospheric carbon levels.³⁰

A shift to a plant-based food system could also slash agricultural land use by 75%,³¹ freeing up vast tracts of land for reforestation and other environmental restoration efforts. This transition extends beyond personal dietary changes. Supporting recommended charities that promote the development of alternative proteins³² and advocate for institutional changes can drive systemic progress. By making farming practices kinder—providing more space for animals and reducing their numbers per farm – we can minimize pollution and allow local ecosystems to process waste more effectively and sustainably.

Innovative solutions are also on the horizon. Companies are developing cell-cultured fish and shrimp, promising consumers the seafood they love without the environmental destruction associated with traditional fishing. Additionally, organizations like the Fish Welfare Initiative are working with the aquaculture industry to improve practices, enhancing both fish welfare and the health of local ecosystems.

As we increase the proportion of our diet that comes from plants, in line with WHO recommendations,³³ we can significantly reduce the environmental burden of farming. These changes represent a crucial step toward a sustainable and compassionate food system that prioritizes both planetary health and animal welfare. The journey ahead may be challenging, but the potential benefits for our planet and future generations are immense.

Want to get involved?

We can all be involved in helping speed up the change to a kinder way of farming.

The charities we support are at the forefront of all these efforts: pressuring companies to end the cruelest practices of factory farming, helping make plant-based meals more available and supporting the development of alternative proteins.

By supporting these charities with even a small amount of your donations, you can be an important part of the movement to fix factory farming and make our food kinder.

Footnotes

1. Our World in Data (2023): “How many animals are factory-farmed” – "There is no specific definition of a ‘factory farm’. In agricultural research, they are often known as ‘concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO)’. The US Department for Agriculture has consistent criteria for CAFOs to track and quantify these farms. ... the Sentience Institute has used publicly available data – in this case, published by the USDA Census of Agriculture (number of animals per farm) and Environment Protection Agency (CAFO definitions).. It estimates that 99% of livestock in the US were factory-farmed in 2017”.
Sentience Institute, 2019: US Factory Farming Estimates – "We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present. By species, we estimate that 70.4% of cows, 98.3% of pigs, 99.8% of turkeys, 98.2% of chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9% of chickens raised for meat are living in factory farms. Based on the confinement and living conditions of farmed fish, we estimate that virtually all US fish farms are suitably described as factory farms, though there is limited data on fish farm conditions and no standardized definition. Land animal figures use data from the USDA Census of Agriculture and EPA definitions of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.[↑] 2. Compassion in World Farming cites 73% in one estimate, and 85% in another:
(a) "It is estimated that around 73% of farmed animals in the UK are kept in indoor factory farms",
(b) “It’s a sad fact that around 85% of farmed animals are confined in factory farms here in the UK.” [↑] 3. (a) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2013): “Tackling climate change through livestock” – “Representing 14.5 percent of human-induced GHG emissions, the livestock sector plays an important role in climate change”
(b) Our World in Data (2019): “Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions” – This source shows a detailed breakdown of food system related emissions. 26% of global emissions are attributed to food, of which 52% is attributed to farmed animals (30% from direct methane emissions, fuel use, and manure management, 6% from animal feed, and 16% from land use). This 52% figure doesn’t include the contribution of animal products to supply chain emissions (which make up 18% of food system emissions). [↑] 4. This specific claim has been made in many different ways on the internet. Groups with an interest in concluding that beef is totally fine have come out to contest the claim, whilst others with an interest in concluding that beef is horrible have come out to defend it. Both sides are guilty of lying with statistics. For example, one group will subtly talk about CO2 emissions only, instead of looking at CO2-equivalent emissions (where different gases that cause climate change are aggregated by weighting them by the amount of warming they cause over a 100-year timescale). Another group will compare the emissions of one cow and one car, versus the aggregate impacts of cow-farming and car-driving. At FarmKind, we just want to find out and share the truth. Our independent investigation concludes that, according to the best evidence available, globally beef production caused more CO2-equivalent emissions than cars and trucks combined (and almost as much as transport in total): Beef production produced ~7.6 Gt CO2-equivalent in 2022 (99.5 kg CO2e per kg of beef, multiplied by 76.25 million tons of beef produced), while passenger vehicles and freight vehicles totalled ~6.0 Gt in 2022 (74.5% of 8 Gt from transport). Ultimately which source comes out in front is unimportant – what’s clear is that they’re in the same ballpark, which means we need to address the role of our food system in climate change. [↑] 5. Our World in Data (2018): “Greenhouse gas emissions per 100 grams of protein” – Beef is 113.4 times as emissions intensive per unit protein than peas (measured in carbon dioxide equivalents). [↑] 6. Espinosa-Marron et al. (2022): “Environmental Impact of Animal-Based Food Production and the Feasibility of a Shift Toward Sustainable Plant-Based Diets in the United States” – “An estimated 88% of emissions in the life cycle of animal products are generated on-farm, with only 12% derived from food system activities after agricultural production (e.g., processing, refrigeration, transport, retail, waste)” [↑] 7. Our World in Data (2018): “Food: greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain” – 1 kilogram of beef generates 99.48 kg of CO2-eq, of which 0.49kg is attributed to transport. [↑] 8. American Public Health Association (2019): “Precautionary Moratorium on New and Expanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” – “In the United States, CAFOs produce an estimated 369 million tons of animal manure a year, approximately 13 times the sewage produced by the U.S. population”... “typically stored in open or covered pits or liquid lagoons”, “often at rates far exceeding the capacity of nearby farmland to absorb it” – “a public health and ecological hazard through the degradation of surface and groundwater resources”. [↑] 9. United Nations Environment Programme (2020): “10 things you should know about industrial farming” – “It contaminates water and soil and affects human health. Agriculture plays a major role in pollution, releasing large volumes of manure, chemicals, antibiotics, and growth hormones into water sources.” [↑] 10. Our World in Data (2018): “Eutrophying emissions per 100 grams of protein” – “Eutrophying emissions represent runoff of excess nutrients into the surrounding environment and waterways, which affect and pollute ecosystems. They are measured in grams of phosphate equivalents (PO₄eq)”. Compared to the plant-based staples wheat, peanuts, corn and peas, the worst of which produces 5.9g of eutrophying emissions per 100g of protein, dairy, prawns and fish produce 185.1g (i.e. 31x), 153.8g (26x) and 103.1g (17x) respectively. [↑] 11. Poore and Nemecek (2018): “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers” – Compared to tofu, which produced 6.7g SO2eq per 100g of protein: Beef produces 343.6g, cheese produces 165.5g, pork produces 142.7g, lamb produces 139.0g, crustaceans produce 133.1g and poultry produces 102.4g. [↑] 12. Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture [↑] 13. Our World in Data (2019): “Land use” – “If we combine global grazing land with the amount of cropland used for animal feed, livestock accounts for 80% of agricultural land use… Despite the vast amount of land used for livestock animals, they contribute quite a small share of the global calorie and protein supply. Meat, dairy and farmed fish provide just 17% of the world’s calories, and 38% of its protein” [↑] 14. Our World in Data (2018): “Land use per 100 grams of protein” – Lamb and mutton use 184.8m² per 100 grams of protein, while beef uses 163.6m². The average of these is 174.2m², which is >51x the 3.4m² used by peas. [↑] 15. Our World in Data (2021): “Drivers of Deforestation” – “The expansion of pasture land to raise cattle was responsible for 41% of tropical deforestation. That’s 2.1 million hectares every year – about half the size of the Netherlands” [↑] 16. Our World in Data (2021): “Drivers of Deforestation” – “Palm oil and soy often claim the headlines for their environmental impact. They are categorized as ‘oilseeds’, which also include a range of smaller commodities such as sunflower, rapeseed, and sesame. They drove 18% of deforestation… More than three-quarters (77%) of soy is used as feed for livestock… Over one-third (37%) of global soy is fed to chickens and other poultry; one-fifth to pigs; and 6% for aquaculture. Very little soy is used for beef and dairy production – only 2%”. [↑] 17. NASA Earth Observatory (2021): “Sizing Up How Agriculture Connects to Deforestation” – “Cattle pastures caused about five times more deforestation than any of the other commodities we analyzed” [↑] 18. Our World in Data (2023): “Status of the world’s fish stocks” – “Fish stocks become overexploited when fish are caught at a rate higher than the population can support, and the ability of the stock to produce its Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) is jeopardized”. 35.4% of stocks were over-exploited as of 2019 and 96% increase on 1990 levels. [↑] 19. (a) Our World in Data (2024): “Fish and overfishing” – “What we see clearly is that the deeper the trawl digs into the sediment, the more biota we kill. Otter trawls have the lowest impact: they dig just 2.4 centimeters into the sediment, and around 6% of organisms are lost. Beam trawls lose 14%. Towed dredges dig twice as deep, and one-fifth of organisms are killed off. The most damaging method is hydraulic dredging: it digs deep into the sediment at 16 centimeters, and 41% of organisms are destroyed as a result.”
(b) Our World in Data (2024): “Fish and overfishing” – “For the ecosystem to get back to its pre-trawling state takes a few years if it’s left alone. In their analysis, Hiddink and colleagues found average recovery times (where ‘recovery’ means getting back to 95% of pre-trawling biomass levels) in the range of 1.9 to 6.4 years. The differences here were dependent on the method used – the shallower otter trawls caused less damage and recovered more quickly than the deep hydraulic trawling – and the environmental context, such as the type of seabed.” [↑] 20. Our World in Data (2018): “Wild fish catch by gear type” – 25.11% of fish come from bottom trawling as of 2018. [↑] 21. Our World in Data (2024): “Fish and overfishing” – “The total ocean seabed spans 361 million km². That’s the top bar in the chart. Most of this is deep ocean, far from the world’s continents, and at depths that we rarely visit. Around 10% of the world’s seabed is shallower than 1000 meters – this threshold includes all of the world’s continental shelves and areas that we’d fish in. That means 37 million km² of seabed is within our scope. That is shown by the second bar. Our 5 million km² of trawled seabed – shown as the bottom bar – is therefore equal to around 13.5% of the explorable seabed” [↑] 22. (a) 40% of wild caught fish fed to farmed fish: Mood et al. (2023): “Estimating global numbers of farmed fishes killed for food annually from 1990 to 2019” – “Estimated finfish numbers used for reduction to fishmeal and oil represented 56% of the total 2010 estimate”, “Respectively, 70 and 73% of fishmeal and fish oil are used for aquaculture feeds (Mallison 2017), though their inclusion rates (as a percentage of feed) show a clear downward trend (FAO 2020b)”. So 56% x 70/73% = ~40% of wild caught fish are fed to farmed fish.
(b) 440 wild fish per farmed salmon: Compassion in World Farming (2023): “Rethinking EU Aquaculture: For People, Animals and the Planet” – See pages 10-11. The authors start with average salmon harvest mass = 5.5kg (Scottish government data). They then work backwards: (a) They use a feed conversion ratio of 1.2 to calculate the amount of feed needed (6.6kg). (b) They use estimates from the Chilean and Norwegian salmon farming industry to determine how much fishmeal and fish oil are needed to produce this much feed (0.79kg and 0.66kg). (c) Next they use the efficiency of converting wild caught fish mass to fishmeal and oil to estimate the amount of wild caught fish mass needed (8.8kg). (d) Finally they use the average mass of a wild caught fish to calculate 440 wild caught fish per salmon. [↑] 23. (a) Antibiotics: Pepi and Focardi (2021): “Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in Aquaculture and Climate Change: A Challenge for Health in the Mediterranean Area” – “The use of antibiotics in aquaculture is well known and this practice can cause the spread of antibiotic residues in the marine environment, increasing the rates of antibiotic resistance in aquatic bacteria and, critically, transfer that resistance to human pathogens”
(b) Pesticides: Conservation Evidence (2020): “Subtidal Benthic Invertebrate Conservation - Reduce the amount of pesticides used in aquaculture systems” – “Pesticides are used in aquaculture to reduce or eliminate pests. For example, the carbaryl pesticide Sevin is commonly used in the USA to control ghost shrimp Callianassa californiensis and mud shrimp Upogebia pugettensis in oyster culture (Weston 2000). Pesticides, however, have the potential to negatively impact non-target species, such as subtidal benthic invertebrates. This has been shown in the salmon aquaculture, where pesticides used against sea lice caused harm to crustaceans and worms (Mayor et al. 2009; Waddy et al. 2002)”
(c) Eutrophication: Martinez-Porchas and Martinez-Cordova (2012): “World Aquaculture: Environmental Impacts and Troubleshooting Alternatives” – “The eutrophication or organic enrichment of water column is mainly produced by nonconsumed feed (especially due to overfeeding), lixiviation of aquaculture feedstuffs, decomposition of dead organisms, and overfertilization. It is well documented that from the total nitrogen supplemented to the cultured organisms, only 20 to 50% is retained as biomass by the farmed organisms, while the rest is incorporated into the water column or sediment, and eventually discharged in the effluents toward the receiving ecosystems, causing diverse impacts such as phytoplankton blooms (sometimes of toxic microalgaes, such as red tides), burring, and death of benthic organisms, as well as undesirable odors and the presence of pathogens in the discharge sites” [↑] 24. The United Kingdom Treasury (2021): “The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review” – “Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history. Current extinction rates, for example, are around 100 to 1,000 times higher than the baseline rate, and they are increasing.” [↑] 25. The World Wildlife Fund: “What is the sixth mass extinction and what can we do about it?” – “Unlike previous extinction events caused by natural phenomena, the sixth mass extinction is driven by human activity, primarily (though not limited to) the unsustainable use of land, water and energy use, and climate change. Currently, 40% of all land has been converted for food production” [↑] 26. Dinosaur mass extinction: what caused it, which dinosaurs went extinct, and how mammals survived [↑] 27. Quintanilla et al. (2022): “The Amazon against the clock: a Regional Assessment on Where and How to protect 80% by 2025” – See pie chart on page 8 [↑] 28. Our World in Data (2022): “Wild mammals make up only a few percent of the world’s mammals” – Figure shows wild mammals making up 4% of total mammal biomass, farmed mammals making up 62% and humans making up 34%. 62/66% = ~ 94%. A second figure shows farmed birds making up 71% of bird biomass (~2.5x the 29% that wild birds make up) [↑] 29. Eisen and Brown (2022): “Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century” – “[Eliminating animal agriculture] would have the same effect, through the end of the century, as a 68% reduction of CO2 emissions”, and “Replacing ruminants achieves over 90 percent of climate benefit of eliminating animal agriculture”. [↑] 30. (a) Our World in Data (2018): “How does the carbon footprint of protein-rich foods compare?” – The graph shows that the majority of global nut production is carbon negative, “even after accounting for other emissions and transport”
(b) Our World in Data (2022): “FAQs on the environmental impacts of food” – “In the recent past, many nut plantations have replaced grasslands or abandoned pastures. Since the trees of nut crops sequester carbon dioxide, when they replace some grasslands this can actually result in an emission saving due to positive land use change. This effect, however, will eventually diminish as nut plantations are grown on land that was not previously grasslands”. It should be noted that while nuts perform well in terms of carbon emissions, they arguably perform worst out of any protein source in terms of the usage of freshwater. [↑] 31. (a) Our World in Data (2021): “If the world adopted a plant-based diet, we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares” – “In the hypothetical scenario in which the entire world adopted a vegan diet the researchers estimate that our total agricultural land use would shrink from 4.1 billion hectares to 1 billion hectares. A reduction of 75%. That’s equal to an area the size of North America and Brazil combined”
(b) Scarborough et al. (2023): “Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts” – “Dietary impacts of vegans were 25.1% (95% uncertainty interval, 15.1–37.0%) of high meat-eaters (≥100 g total meat consumed per day) for greenhouse gas emissions, 25.1% (7.1–44.5%) for land use, 46.4% (21.0–81.0%) for water use, 27.0% (19.4–40.4%) for eutrophication and 34.3% (12.0–65.3%) for biodiversity.” [↑] 32. The World Bank (2024): “Publication: Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System” – Alternative proteins have the second-highest climate change mitigation potential at 6.1 GtCO2 eq/year, outranked only by afforestation/reforestation (8.47 GtCO2 eq/year) [↑] 33. World Health Organization (2021) “Plant-based diets and their impact on health, sustainability and the environment” – “Overall, a diet that is predominantly plant-based and low in salt, saturated fats and added sugars is recommended as part of a healthy lifestyle.” “For consumers who are new to plant-based diets and those who currently eat animal products frequently, it may be helpful to focus on incremental transitions towards plant-based diets by adopting plant-forward eating, in which meat is not necessarily excluded but is not the central feature of the meal.” “Considerable evidence supports shifting populations towards healthful plant- based diets that reduce or eliminate intake of animal products and maximize favourable “One Health” impacts on human, animal and environmental health.” [↑]