The Pros And Cons Of Factory Farming

During the 1970’s, the top five meat packing companies controlled only about a quarter of the meat packing industry and thousands of slaughterhouses produced most of the meat being sold. Today, there are only four meat packers that control over eighty percent of the market, and most of the meat being sold in our stores is produced by only 13 slaughterhouses (Kenner). Most of the plant and animal products that are available for us to buy in grocery stores haven’t been raised on farms; they have been produced by factories. Many of these factories are not unlike the Smithfield Hog Processing Plant, where 32,000 hogs are killed every single day (Kenner). Over the course of the last thirty to forty years, we have seen countless companies be bought
out by monopolies. These massive monopolized companies demand an enormous supply of products, and need them to come from reliable places. Large scale factory farms have nearly taken over the production of all food in the United States. While some believe that this is a good thing, saying that it allows a variety of food to reach all parts of the country, gives farmers the ability to focus on only one or a few crops and still make a profit, and thinking that it is the only way to keep feeding a constantly growing population, others focus on the adverse effects that have arisen. Large farms have turned the more traditional small scale, sustainable farming method into a factory method, where the mass production of plants and animals allow company size and profits to skyrocket, placing animal rights, quality of food, and the environment in the back seat. In the earlier days, farming was how most people supported themselves and their families. Methods were simpler, more organic, and farm sizes were much smaller and more sustainable. With the industrialization of America, however, this all changed. There became a demand for people to get jobs that didn’t involve growing their own food. Over time, more and more people started making money in order to buy food that someone else produced. This developed further and further until the vast majority of people depended on a decreasing proportion of farmers to get the food that they needed. Through the development of farming to where it is today, certain companies have dramatically increased in size, and now control a growing majority of all food produced in the United States. Today’s American supermarket has roughly 47,000 stocked products on average, and all of them are produced by only a handful of companies (Kenner). These enormous companies require a massive amount of food products that are produced by farmers. This is the motive that drives the success and growth of huge factory farms. As humans, we like to be able to choose what we eat from a wide variety of options. Because of this, we have developed a system that allows large amounts of many different types of foods to be available to us on almost any given day. In order for such large amounts of fruits, vegetables, meats, and other foods to be available, we need farmers to grow massive amounts of each of these products. Because these foods are produced in such large numbers, they are much cheaper and more convenient to the consumer. Also, there is a variety of food no matter the season. You can buy an apple in the middle of January, and you can find corn when it is not harvest season. While these methods meet the consumer’s demands very efficiently, they are completely unnatural and unsustainable. Large plots of only one species of plant are never found in nature, and are only found on farms. The reason that this is never found in nature is because when the same crop is grown on the same soil year after year, that soil runs out of nutrients and loses its ability to naturally support life (Altieri). This has caused an increased demand for Genetically Modified crop seeds, and has led farmers to move their farms, often times destroying forests and natural habitats in the process (Kenner). Our demand for meat has had similar effects. In order to support the growing demand for meats, large factory farms have decreased the amount of space allowed for each animal, and depend on growth hormones and antibiotics to keep their productions high (Kenner). Since consumers demand such huge amounts of similar products like corn and soybeans in particular, farmers are motivated to grow massive amounts of only these crops. This makes it easier for farmers to make more money, because they know that they will have the ability to sell all of what they grow without any trouble. The government has even subsidized crops like corn and soy, so they will actually pay farmers more money to grow them. While this has given assurance that we will never have a shortage of these crops in the near future, we have actually created a surplus of these crops. They have become cheaper and easier to find than ever, and therefor are used to more processed foods than ever before. We have found ways to modify corn and soy so much that it in almost all of the food we buy. While it is easier to make foods out of, and is extremely cheap to the consumer, it has proven to be associated with the dramatic rise is obesity, diabetes and heart disease rates across the country (Pollan). Just because corn and soy are easy and cheap to eat, does not mean they are healthy. High fructose corn syrup has become such a large part of the American diet, which has proven to have adverse health effects. Author Michael Pollan writes, “Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.” If we keep motivating and even paying farmers to grow unhealthy foods, our country will continue to become unhealthier. Many people argue that the system we have developed is the only way that we can keep feeding the rapidly growing population.
After all, a larger number of people demand a larger amount of food. Factory farming is a good way to sustain a large amount of people with food, and is a way to meet the demands of variety and cheapness that will become increasingly important with population growth, but unfortunately it is not sustainable. If we keep leeching soil of its nutrients and keep allowing huge slaughterhouses to dump pollution around the country, the environment that we depend on to live in will experience detrimental effects (Kenner). We cannot keep increasing the size of our farms to meet the increasing size of our population and expect to keep the system working for a long period of time. Farmland will become unable to cultivate, more and more forests will have to be destroyed in order to make way for new farms. Also, more pollution and pesticides will keep entering the natural environment. If we increase the number of farms and decrease their size, grow a variety of foods on the land, and become less dependent on outsourced foods, we can develop a much more sustainable farming system. We might have to adjust to not having a plethora of fruit in the middle of winter, but that is a price we might have to
pay. By having farms that produce a massive supply of produce and meat, we are allowing companies to own larger portions of the food industry. Through this process, monopolies are formed. Instead of a large number of food companies splitting up all of the money that is made through food sales, most of the profits are entering the pockets of only a handful of companies
(Kenner). Smaller companies that are highly focused on quality and keeping their environmental impacts as low as possible are being bought out by enormous companies that have much lower standards, and are focused on mainly making more of a profit. This has also caused overall food quality to decrease. This has had huge effects on people’s health. When it becomes normal to eat foods that are based off of high fructose corn syrup, people start to think that it is healthy to eat that way. This has contributed to the American health problem and will continue to until we change the American diet. When powerful money hungry CEO’s of today’s food market have control over what farms they buy their food from, they choose the cheapest, easiest and most reliable suppliers.
In order to meet this demand, farmers decrease their standards for food quality and replace them with standards of consistent output. If they don’t produce enough food and a low enough price, leading company purchasers will no longer do business with them. This puts pressure on meat farmers to put animal rights and health aside. As many animals as possible are crammed in as little space as possible, and animal satisfaction and overall health decrease dramatically. Diseases are spread from animal to animal much faster, and the need for antibiotics goes up. According to Food Inc., McDonald’s buys more beef than any other company in the United States. When companies with as low of standards as McDonald’s decide the quality of meat that is to be produced, meat of that quality becomes the overwhelming majority of what is available in grocery stores (Kenner). One consumer no longer has input on what kind of quality they want to see in a product, and it is left up to the big spenders to
decide. In order to produce enough food for the demands set by huge companies, farmers must find ways that defy nature to create a larger output. This has caused a dramatic increase in Genetically Modified crops, which now control the majority of crops grown (Kenner). The modifications are made to create a larger yield, but also create a lower quality food with less nutritional value. This method has also taken a drastic toll on animal living conditions. So many steroids and growth hormones are implemented on animals that they grow too fast to be able to support themselves enough to walk (Kenner). Also, to save money, farmers are increasing the number of animals in a smaller amount of space. Farm animals are living in extremely closed quarters, and are walking and lying in the waste of themselves and the other animals. This promotes the rapid spread of disease between animals (Witte). Factory farms also have a detrimental effect on the environment. When farmers need more and more land to grow crops, forests and destroyed and turned into farmland. After a few years of growing the same crops on that land, the soil is leeched of all its nutrients and loses the ability to naturally support plant life, so the farmer is forced to move to new land and destroy more natural habitats. This never ending cycle will continue until a change is made. This is also creating a demand for more GMO crops that can grow with lower levels of nutrients in the soil, which is causing more and more unnatural crops to be used on previously natural land. Above all of this, the meat factories are dumping pollution into the environment. This quote by the National Resources Defense Council explains it well. “On most factory farms, animals are crowded into relatively small areas; their manure and urine are funneled into massive waste lagoons. These cesspools often break, leak or overflow, sending dangerous microbes, nitrate pollution and drug-resistant bacteria into water supplies. Factory-farm lagoons also emit toxic gases such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and methane. What's more, the farms often spray the manure onto land, ostensibly as fertilizer -- these "sprayfields" bring still more of these harmful substances into our air and water.”
Their antibiotic use on the livestock is also leading to antibiotic resistance and the formation of stronger and more resistant strains of diseases that can potentially infect the farmer and even nearby water (Witte). We need to change the way we farm in order to prevent further pollution of our resources and to stop the production of dangerous new diseases. If we don’t change the current factory farming techniques, our food will become separate from whom we are, and will reflect the standards of someone that is trying to only make a profit. Even though the food that is available in stores looks pretty and healthy, it is raised and created in worse and more disturbing ways than many of us can even imagine. In order to change this horrible system we have formed and prevent it from getting worse, we need to go back to our roots, increase the number of small farms, and consequently raise the quality of our food. This will create a healthier and more sustainable planet.