Animal Farming and the Environment

(These notes are from a talk given by Paul Appleby, Secretary of Oxford Vegetarians, to members of Oxford Green Party Students at the Friends Meeting House, Oxford, on Friday 28 January 2000. They are largely based on the Compassion in World Farming Trust report Factory Farming and the Environment.)

The problem:

Large numbers of farm animals, requiring huge quantities of feed (grown on vast areas of land using massive inputs of water, energy, fertilisers and pesticides), produce enormous amounts of waste, causing serious pollution and environmental degradation.

Large numbers of farm animals

billions of farm animals worldwide (36 kg annual per capita meat consumption)
many animals are intensively reared in 'factory farms'
intensive livestock production responsible for 43% of the world's meat in 1996
global demand for meat is predicted to rise by up to 50% over the next 20 years
more than 200 million farm animals in the UK at any one time
about 900 million animals are slaughtered for food in the UK every year
most of the UK's 165 million poultry are reared intensively (76% of laying hens are reared in units of >20,000 birds, 61% of broiler chickens in units of >100,000 birds)
120 million pigs in the EU (concentrations may be >1000 pigs per hectare in parts of Belgium and the Netherlands); the UK has 8 million pigs
12 million cattle in the UK including 3 million dairy cattle (selective breeding and high-protein feeds have increased milk yields to 35-50 litres per day)
44 million sheep in the UK (subsidies have encouraged overstocking)

requiring huge quantities of feed

one third of the world's cereal harvest is fed to farm animals
95% of US soya production (nearly 100 million tonnes per year) is used as feed
worldwide, 73% of maize, 95% of oilmeals and 93% of fishmeal is fed to animals
the EU imports 70% of the high quality protein used in animal feed, some from countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Senegal where there is widespread poverty
the UK imports feed from the equivalent of 1.75 million hectares of land outside the EU each year ('ghost acres'), an area equivalent to 28% of the UK's arable land
an intensively-reared dairy cow may eat 4700 kg of grass and silage and nearly 1650 kg of concentrated protein feed (eg. soya, fishmeal, rapemeal) per year
each kg of beef produced in Europe requires 5 kg of high-protein feedstuffs (FoE)
only a fraction (typically 30-40%) of the plant protein fed to animals is returned as animal protein; for beef cattle the protein conversion ratio is only 8%

grown on vast areas of land

two thirds of the world's agricultural land is used for maintaining livestock
>75% of UK agricultural land is devoted to livestock (67% grass plus 10% feed crops, including 39% of wheat and 51% of barley)

using massive inputs of water, energy, fertilisers and pesticides

87% of fresh water consumed worldwide is used for agriculture - the UN predicts that 40 countries will face severe water shortages in the next 20 years
to produce 1 kg of grain-fed beef requires 100,000 litres of water (100 times and 50 times the amount required to produce 1 kg of wheat and 1 kg of rice respectively)
feed production accounts for 70% of total fossil fuel use in animal farming
the UK uses 1.3 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser and 400,000 tonnes of phosphate per year, much of it used on grassland and crops grown for feed
450 active chemical ingredients are approved for pesticide use in the UK, a 30-fold increase since 1950 (winter wheat receives an average of 8 chemical sprays)

produce enormous amounts of waste

1.4 billion tonnes of solid manure is produced by US farm animals per year - 130 times the amount produced by the human population
200 dairy cows produce as much nitrogen in their manure as 10,000 people
farm animals are major sources of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide
ammonia released from manure and slurry is a major contributor to acid rain
intensive farms are major sources of airborne pollution and generate excess traffic, unpleasant smells and noise locally

causing serious pollution and environmental degradation

farm slurry and silage has many times the pollution potential of domestic sewage - silage effluent caused over 200 water pollution incidents in the UK in 1996
excess nitrogen from intensive farms may cause groundwater pollution, increasing nitrate levels in drinking water
eutrophication (nutrient enrichment) of water systems can cause algal blooms killing fish and other aquatic life and "has become a major problem in north-west Europe" according to the European Environment Agency
fertilisers and pesticides decrease biodiversity; 20 species of British birds have suffered population declines of >50% over the past 25 years - the RSPB blame agricultural practices associated with intensive animal farming
animal feeds crops such as soya, maize and rapeseed are among the first to be genetically modified (40% of the maize and 30-50% of the soyabeans grown in the US are genetically modified) posing an unknown threat to the environment

A range of solutions:

The most compassionate approach to agriculture may be what we, at the Hudson Institute, call 'high-yield conservation' - higher yield crops; higher yield pigs, chickens and cattle; higher efficiency irrigation; and higher yield tree plantations ... (and) the confinement - or intensive - production of cattle, hogs and poultry. Biotechnology seems to be the most promising way to ease land conflict between people and wildlife in the 21st century.
Dennis Avery, The Hudson Institute

In the context of the UK and Europe, the way forward must be the encouragement of extensive animal farming and of mixed farming together with commitment from both government and the farming industry to make environmental protection and animal welfare a priority. This requires the end of subsidies that encourage high stocking densities and overproduction and their replacement with subsidies for environmentally friendly methods of farming. In the context of world trade, the values of environmental protection and animal welfare must be given appropriate weight alongside the values of free trade.
Compassion in World Farming Trust

We can (adapt) by moving down the food chain: eating foods that use less water and land, and that cause far less pollution, than meat production does. In the long run, we can lose our memory of eating animals, and we will discover the intrinsic satisfactions of a diverse plant-based diet, as millions of people already have. The era of mass-produced animal flesh, and its unsustainable costs to human and environmental health, should be over before the (21st) century is out.
Ed Ayres, The Worldwatch Institute