Farming with animals is concerned with the branch of agriculture, which involves raising animals for milk, eggs, meat, and other animal products. It also includes additional high-quality food resources and manure for fertilizers. Apart from that, this blessing comes with a disguise. Farming with animals is a leading culprit when it comes to affecting the environment. The animal farming sector is the largest factor contributing to air pollution, land pollution, soil degradation, slaughtering and rearing of innocent farm animals, and reducing water supplies in the environment. (Scanes, 2018) This sector encompasses the production of feed grain, which requires energy expenditures such as water and chemical inputs to transport all animal products. Thus, this sector provides all the blessings along with the considerable cost to the climate. This essay evaluates how farming with animals is affecting the environment and contributing to climate change as well as global warming.
Changes in the environment can be influenced by farming with animals as animals are the major emitter of Greenhouse gases (GHGs). Scientists have found that animal farming and animal products are responsible for nearly 18% of human-induced Greenhouse gases, namely methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide. Therefore, the emission of greenhouse gases is increasing day by day as the number of farm animals is growing. In the feed production sector of animal farming, fossil fuels are burnt to produce fertilizers for farm animals, especially artificial nitrogenous fertilizer, which is used to cultivate feed for farmed chickens and cows. This fertilizer, in return, releases a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, raising the GHGs in the ecosystem. On the other hand, milk, meat, and other animal products humans use also contribute to human-induced GHGs in the climate.
Moreover, billions of cows and chickens crammed into expanded farms require a large surface area of land, which leads to deforestation. The land requirement for expanding farms for chickens and cows is turning cropland and wood into grazing land and also for producing feed for farm animals. This destruction leads to a substantial cost of losing the forests from the ecosystem. So, carbon dioxide and GHGs are not absorbed in the atmosphere and, therefore, are released heavily into the environment. Furthermore, human disturbance due to animal farming is the consequence of desertification due to the overgrazing of cows and other animals. This also comes because of the trampling of vegetative land, which tends to reduce crop productivity. (Leifeld, 2012)
Land use for farming also reduces methane oxidation, which is produced in an enormous amount by chickens and cows. Scientists have reported that methane oxidation by microorganisms present in the soil is estimated to be 84 times more effective than carbon dioxide gas to trap the heat caused by global warming in the atmosphere. Methane, which cows and chickens produce during their process of digestion and through their faeces, is released out into the atmosphere rather than being utilized.
Moreover, farmed chickens and cows generate an estimated 355 million tons of manure. Indeed, manure is a significant element in fertilizing crops, cultivating vegetation for humans, and feeding farm animals. However, the manure produced worldwide has exceeded the quantity, and the available land is not enough to absorb it. Resultantly, this effective manure turns into hazardous waste, which, due to lack of availability for utilization, becomes a major source of threat to the quality of soil, water, and air in the environment. (Scanes, 2018)
In summary, farming with animals mitigates environmental changes and leads to serious destructions such as desertification, deforestation, trapping of heat, enormous GHG emissions, and global warming. However, incorporating individual initiatives of relying less on meat as well as on dairy products can slow down the dire effects of climate change in the future.
References
Scanes, C. G. (2018, January 1). Chapter 18 – Impact of Agricultural Animals on the Environment (C. G. Scanes & S. R. Toukhsati, Eds.). ScienceDirect; Academic Press. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128052471000253?via%3Dihub
Leifeld, J. (2012). How sustainable is organic farming? Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 150, 121–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2012.01.020
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