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Chapter H: Impact of the Industrial Meat System on Land

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Chapter H: Impact of the Industrial Meat System on Land Aliza Lieb, Gavin Lue, Tatiana Nunez, and Michelle Pelan Chapter H: Impact of the Industrial Meat System on Land I. INTRODUCTION This chapter explores the impact of the meat industry on land. This industry not only constitutes a major portion of land usage, but it has detrimental effects on the land it uses. To illustrate this, the chapter discusses the amount of land consumed by Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). More specifically, it focuses on the size of CAFOs and how much of the land in the United States is used by CAFOs in comparison to the total landmass of the country. The amount of land consumed in non-CAFO animal raising is presented as well. In this case, the animals are not confined; they are allowed to graze freely, which takes up a significant amount of land. The chapter additionally discusses the negative effects of CAFOs and the raising of animals for the meat industry on the land, focusing specifically on soil erosion and biodiversity loss. Soil erosion has several damaging effects on the land; the decline in biodiversity, which is due to numerous factors including soil erosion, desertification, and habitat destruction, is equally as harmful. Overall, this chapter reveals one of the major environmental problems of industrial agriculture: its impact on the land. It ends with suggestions to mitigate these effects as well as alternate farming methods that cater to the preservation of the land and the maintenance of its biodiversity. II. LITERATURE REVIEW A. CAFO Land Usage 1. History of the CAFO “Farming on a large, factory scale escalated in the United States following World War II. Larger machines already were replacing laborers who had been moving to the nation’s cities to work in expanding factories and offices.” (Food & Waterwatch) Over time and along with the development of new and more efficient machines and tools for farming, the situation only continued to escalate. Over the course of the late 1960s, ‘70s, and accelerating during the 1980s and ‘90s, shifting federal agriculture policy and the growing power of the agribusiness corporations and traders that control world markets for the major commodity crops –– think corn, wheat, and soybeans, which go into much of our processed food and feed products –– gradually overlaid a production, assembly-line framework onto food and farming. It encourages the employment of labor and time saving machines to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops, and the use of petroleum-based synthetic chemicals to sustain them. Instead of raising livestock, a variety of grain crops, vegetables, and fruit on, say, 200 acres or fewer, farmers sacrificed their farm diversity. In general, they began to focus either on raising thousands of live- stock animals in crammed quarters or on growing a limited variety of corn, soybeans, wheat, and other commodity crops on hundreds or thousands of acres. Large global agribusiness processors such as Cargill then buy the food and feed grain from farmers at low prices. (Food & Waterwatch) 2. CAFO Usage Today “With a growing number of consumers switching from red meat to poultry, the chicken and turkey industries are booming. In addition to the expanding U.S market, poultry companies are also benefiting from expanding markets around the world.”(Farm Sanctuary 2009) Record numbers of chickens and turkeys are being raised and killed for meat in the U.S. every year. Nearly ten billion chickens and over a quarter billion turkeys are hatched in the U.S. annually. These birds are typically crowded by the thousands into huge, factory-like warehouses where they can barely move. Each chicken is given less than half a square foot of space, while turkeys are each given less than three square feet. Shortly after hatching, both chickens and turkeys have the ends of their beaks cut off, and turkeys also have the ends of their toes clipped off. These mutilations are performed without anesthesia, ostensibly to reduce injuries that result when stressed birds are driven to fighting. (Farm Sanctuary 2009) B. Non-CAFO Land Usage in Animal Raising Throughout the past ten decades or so, the food industry in the United States has changed dramatically. It is certainly safe to say that most of us belonging to the generation graduating college in the United States in the 2000s have never tasted a hamburger made from grass-fed cattle. In the past, raising cattle on sunshine and green pastures was fairly typical. Before the introduction of the CAFO, animals were raised and butchered locally, and meat was much harder to come by. (Gabaccia 1998) However, as countries became wealthier, and the demand for meat grew, farmers began to industrialize in order to meet the rising demands. Food manufacturing requires huge amounts of land. Studies have shown that a mere 31% of the global soil surface can be used for crop growth, as well as an added 33% that may be used for grassland that is suitable for cattle grazing. (Gerbens-Leenes, et al, 2002) According to agricultural studies on food security done across the world, due to a shift from a vegetarian diet to a diet rich with meat has lead to a threefold increase in the land required. (Gerbens-Leenes, et al, 2002) Based on findings done in 1990, due to raised consumption rates of certain food products, land requirements for food increased from 72 units in 1950, to 100 units in 1990, showing us an escalation of 38%. However, despite the rise of land consumption between the years 1950 and 1960 for food products overall, the land requirement for meat products merely doubled. This was due to the change from beef consumption, with a fairly large specific land requirement, to poultry, with a fairly small land requirement. In 1990, the amount of land requirements for livestock food was 47% of the total amount of land consumed for all food products. Although this may be the case, it should be noted that the size of the beef industry has declined somewhat over the past 15 years. However, the amount of cattle raised for meat consumption, 11.9 million, in 1992, has relatively stayed the same when compared to 11.8 million in 2001. The amount of beef cows has remained at approximately 33 million head (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). The cow-calf operation is the management unit that maintains a breeding herd and produces weaned calves. In many cow-calf operations, enterprises called feedlots are used, in which cattle are fed grain and other concentrates for approximately 90-120 days. They vary in size from less than 100-head capacity to the thousands (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). Different feedlot sizes and structures can, and often, have an effect on the amount of land used for the cattle on a specific farm. C. Negative effects on the land 1. What is the relationship between overgrazing and land degradation/soil erosion? In her essay “Application of Herbivore Optimization Theory to Rangelands of the Western United States,” Elizabeth L. Painter and A. Joy Belsky discuss how grazing can actually be beneficial to land, because it leads to compensatory growth. Although this might seem to contradict the point of this chapter, it shows how bad inappropriate farming methods are, because they do not make use of “grazing optimization.” The authors cite a study by Owen and Wiegert that supports the theory that the loss of plant tissue to herbivores results in increased total productivity. This came to be known as the “herbivore optimization hypothesis,” and it was argued that components in the saliva of herbivores stimulate plant growth. There is much dispute over this idea, but it is still important to note. It relates to this chapter because it exposes the fact that grazing does not have to be harmful to land. In order for overcompensation to occur though, it is advisable that there be monocultures, rich soils, and a continuously wet growing season. It is the second demand that is most difficult to fulfill, especially in western U.S. rangelands, where much of soil erosion occurs. According to “Soil erosion in the UK initiated by grazing animals: A need for a national survey,” by R. Evans, overgrazing is responsible for 35.8 percent of all forms of degradation, and it is especially prominent in Australia and Africa, where it accounts for 80.6 and 49.2 percent respectively and least so in Europe, where it accounts for 22.7 percent. Evans writes about the argument that degradation is only a short-term phenomenon, because it causes animal populations to decline. This then takes the pressure off the land enough so that it can recover. Evans also writes about the negative effects of the grazing animals’ actual hooves on the land. The problem with soil is that once it is exposed, the effects of wind and rain do the rest of the work of eroding it. The soil protects itself naturally once enough erosion has occurred, by revealing a surface better suited to colonization or one that is more resistant, such as hard rock. The hard rock is not useable, though. 2. What are the long-term effects of soil erosion? In Saving Our Soil, James Glanz writes that wind and water erosion cost the United States $44 billion annually. He distinguishes between “on-site” and “off-site” losses. An on-site loss is the value of nutrients lost with the soil, while an off-site loss refers to the damage inflicted on the surrounding environment. Some of the examples he provides are: the silting in of reservoirs, harbors, recreational lakes, and water treatment facilities, as well as negative health consequences for the people living in these areas.
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