The world as we know it continues to grow and with more humans means more food to help feed them. But do we really know where our food comes from? When you eat a hamburger for example, as great as it tastes, do you really know where that meat came from? Sustainable agriculture is the classic way of farming. Just like how you see it on TV. It includes Responsible farmers who treat their cattle the same way they would treat a family member. It’s also healthier and doesn’t harm the environment. Industrial agriculture is like farming but is able to create larger amounts of food and drinks but at a price. They rely on drugs to help boost the size of cattle, also where the animals live and how they are treated is very poor. Both of these forms of producing agriculture are complete opposites of each other.
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| Sustainable Farming |
The world’s population is said to be 6.8 billion but grows by 83 million people each year. It worries me that with that many people living in our world today, how could we possibly be able to feed every single one of them? To be honest we have 6.8 billion people in our world today but yet there are still people starving for food in Africa. So if we have people starving in Africa and around the world, how exactly can we be prepared for the steady increase in population EVERY YEAR! Now would sustainable agriculture be a good choice for keeping our world vitalized? Well, this would mean we would have to increase the food production by 70%. This would be impossible to do with sustainable agriculture, which is why industrial agriculture seems to be the way to go.
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| Industrial Farm |
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| Little to no space to move around |
Industrial agriculture isn’t the right choice but at the same time do we really have another choice? Not only is it cheaper to buy but it is also quicker. “Factory Farms” are what modern day farming is being called. They are large industrial buildings that process food in large bulk to be sent around the world for consumers to purchase. The real name for these “farms” is Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFO’s. A normal CAFO contains a large number of different animals. So one may have 1000 cattle, while another may have 100,000 chickens. Now with that many animals, can you imagine how they are forced to live. Well they live in a very close confined space beside their fellow species. They are drugged and mutated to adapt to the factories surroundings. They are also given low amounts of anti-biotic to ward of diseases and promote faster
growth.
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| Price Choppers eh? |
Now knowing what you know, would you still by products from your supermarket? Of course you would, what choice do we have. I believe you can still buy products which are naturally made and farmed but for the most part you will be buying products that are produced in Factory Farms. Personally I believe that industrial agriculture is the future of how food may be produced but at the same time we should still support sustainable agriculture by buying natural grown products and it also helps support farmers who have stuck to the classic way of farming.
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Sometimes we have to throw away what's right and do what we need to do to survive, if industrial agriculture seems like the only way we're gonna feed 8-10 billion people, well we got our work cut out. I think we need to tinker with the way industrial agriculture is run, maybe develope more healthier drugs and feed so that people won't be scared to buy products that are produced in "factories". As for the treatment of animals in CAFOs, well it may seem selfish of humans and inhumane but until we develope more productive ways to get our food thats how its gonna stay, which is a sad but what can you do?
ReplyDeleteThe only thing i disagree with in your blog, is your choice to go back to the "regular farmers". Of course as good and nice as it sounds to support the old school farmers who use much more appropriate methods, it is becoming less and less possible with the huge population rise. Just think about it, you said that one of those CAFOs can hold around 100,000 chickens. Ok, so how many chickens do you think farmer Ben can keep in his sty? It's appropriate to support them, but we can't completely depend on them anymore.
ReplyDeleteI believe that it will be hard to stick with regular sustainable agriculture because first of all it will be expensive, and second of all sooner or later most of them will run out of money and disappear. This is because many of these Factory Farms make it hard for these regular farms to operate by making outlandish law suits that they can't afford to fight and by buying them out. So unfortunately I think that it's only a matter of time before all we will be eating is foods that come form industrial agriculture.
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