Intensive Farming and Agriculture

            I really wanted to take a look at something that affects not only me but most people on a daily basis. I can only speak for myself but most of the people around me rely on grocery stores for their food and at the stores we are on a tight budget so we don’t buy the organic goods. We have briefly talked about intensive farming and agriculture in class and it is what produces most of the food I eat. I wanted to take a little deeper look into what goes on in intensive farming and see where the food I am eating really comes and in some cases what it really is. Coming into this paper I have heard a little about genetically modified seeds and the horrible conditions that the animals are raised in for our meat products but now I would like to know more.

            Intensive agriculture is defined as “farming that uses a lot of machinery, labor, chemicals, etc. in order to grow as many crops or keep as many animals as possible on the amount of land available” (Cambridge Dictionaries Online). After reading this definition this sounds like what you would want to run a successful business. In business your goal is to maximize your output while keeping your costs as low as possible. But after saying that, I feel that as a business it is also their job to protect the environment around them. With the use of all of the chemicals and machinery this can’t be good for the environment. The even crazier thing to me is they use all of these harmful environmental things but they still need this environment to produce their goods. They need the water for the animals and plants, and they need the soil and grass to feed the animals and plant the vegetables in. So they would want to cut down on the machinery and chemicals to help keep the environment they have to reuse safe? That seems like an easy question for me to answer and that is yes but maybe that is where the genetic seeds come into play.

            Genetic modified seeds were created to be able to grow in any area. The biggest key about genetically modified seeds is “genetic modification of seeds primarily occurs to make plants resistant to herbicides and pesticides” (West Coast Seeds). Again this sounds like a great idea a seed that is resistant to pesticides and herbicides, but at what cost. After doing a little more research on theses seeds there are a lot of pros and cons for them. Some of the pros are that they grow much faster and are much more resilient to diseases. This is huge when farmers have to produce enough food to feed our very large nation. And this can come back to what Dr. Stuart was talking about in class on Monday the 17^th with overconsumption. We are an over consuming society and the farmers have to try and keep up with us. But the cons are pretty scary like the potential health effects they can cause humans “although GM foods are rigorously tested, there may be some subtle, long term effects that cannot be detected yet” (Bocco). This is scary to me because I don’t want to have a long term effect from eating my food. Now I’m wondering what I am really eating. I am just guessing here but I don’t think the risk is too high or someone would have come in and shut down the companies producing the genetically modified seeds.

            When it comes to animals intensive farming goes by another name, factory farming which is “a farm on which large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost” (Merriam-Webster). This sounds like a smart idea just like the seeds you want to maximize production by having the lowest cost of production. But after reading some other things about factory farming it is tough to believe that they are allowed to even do this. The animals are treated terribly and can’t do anything to defend themselves. “Animals on factory farms are regarded as commodities to be exploited for profit. They undergo painful mutilations and are bred to grow unnaturally fast and large for the purpose of maximizing meat, egg, and milk production for the food industry” (Farm Sanctuary).  This is tough to hear ad the pictures and videos online are even tougher to see. I don’t know if you have seen some of the conditions that these animals have to live with and honestly I hope not because it is gross and sad. Yes I am a meat eater and to I don’t think I could ever become a vegetarian but it is tough to see the food I am eating is raised that way. The companies running these farms want us to think the animals are out grazing in open fields and living easy lives until we consume them. That is not the case with these big companies, they are forcing animals to eat and get fat as fast as possible then ship them off to the slaughterhouses. This is terrible for the animals but the factory farming also has a huge impact on the environment and us.

            Having all of those animals in such a confined space leads to tons of pollution. All of those animals are going to the bathroom in the same place and I doubt they clean it out very often so it just sits there. If the animals are grazing in the pasture all of the feces won’t be in the same place so it will help to fertilize the ground and keep the grass growing. When the waste is cleared “Factory farms typically store animal waste in huge, open-air lagoons, often as big as several football fields, which are prone to leaks and spills” (Farm Sanctuary). That is a lot of feces in a pond that just sits there and stinks up the surrounding areas. People living near areas with factory farms have been getting sick from the smell, and I can only imagine if the lagoon would break and get into a local creek. There is no way I would be able to live anywhere near one of these farms. But that’s not even the worst thing that can happen to us as consumers of the meat from these farms. “Poor sanitation and waste management on factory farms and the poor management of animal waste can lead to the contamination of the food supply by the bacteria like E.coli and salmonella. Each year 76 million Americans become ill from food borne illness, and thousands die” (Farm Sanctuary). This is very alarming to me because 76 MILLION people a year get sick from food borne illnesses. That is way too many and the farms are making this number so high by not taking of the waste produced by the animals. I hear stories all of the time on the news about a recall for beef or other products because of E.coli or salmonella. Now I know the reason why, because the farmers are letting the waste contaminate their products. Another thing I read about was all the antibiotics given to the animals that can cause harm to us. The farmers force the animals to eat antibiotics to make them grow faster and produce more milk or eggs, and these can have a negative effect on us. “The six growth hormones commonly used by the U.S. dairy industry have been shown to significantly increase the risk of breast, prostate, and colon cancer in beef consumers. Producers are not required to list the use of hormones on product labels” (Farm Sanctuary). I don’t understand how they can be allowed to feed these animals all those hormones if they are not good for them and they aren’t good for us. And if they are allowed to do it why don’t they have to tell us on the package? Companies have to put some of the dumbest things on their packages to make sure they don’t have a lawsuit but these beef producers don’t have to put the hormones on their packages.

            When it comes down to it I really don’t see the big problem with the genetically modified seeds these corporations are using to mass produce. We need the food with the way that our society consumes and to me the benefits outweigh the negatives by far. Yes intensive farming has some negative effects like pollution that are tough to deal with. But the amount of food that can be produced and the amount of food we need produced then this may be the way to go. The one huge difference to me between intensive agriculture farming and intensive animal farming or factory farming is that they aren’t harming another living animal. Intensive agriculture doesn’t have as many negatives to me as factory farming does.

            Factory farming yes is productive but at what expense? Most of us, me included, knew that the commercials about all the animals grazing in the pasture and living easy lives were false. But I didn’t know how bad it really is for those animals. My grandparents used to live on a farm and their neighbor had around 500 heads of cattle. And they raised their cattle in the way it should be they graze from pasture to pasture and then when they get old they are sent to the slaughterhouse. I know I may be dreaming a bit here because yes it is the way the animals we eat should be raised but with how much we consume it just isn’t logical. Having said that the corporations should not be treating the animals as bad as they are keeping them in confined areas, force feeding them hormones, and abusing them that’s just not right.

            This has been one of the most eye opening research papers I have ever done in my life. I thought I knew a lot more about the food I am eating than I really do. After reading all of the things I have I have come to the decision that intensive farming may not be the best but in the world we live in today it is the only way to keep up with our consumption. I keep coming back to this idea of our consumption which is a huge issue and why the farming has to keep mass producing everything. I feel that we need to try and cut back especially in our consumption of meat products to help cut down on the unethical treatment of those animals. I know this is tough for us to do as a society because it is against what most of us are used to. I’m not an expert by any means but the reason intensive farming has come into existence was to keep up with our society and our thinking of always wanting more.