how is factory farming unsustainable?

Question

I know that conditions in factory farms are gross and cruel to animals, but I don’t understand how it isn’t sustainable from an environmental perspective. Less cruel and more natural means for raising livestock take up much more land. With all the beef eaten in the United States, could most of it easily be raised on grass pastures, or would that require an unreasonably enormous portion of land be devoted to grazing? As for chickens, I know they’re generally considered carnivores but are fed grains in most farms, which is less healthy for them. They also aren’t given much space to move around inside giant pens.

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With the huge appetite for meat humanity has, and with a growing population, it seems like the means of raising livestock that are the most popular became that way because they were the most efficient. I’m not saying efficient is best for the animals or for the quality of the product, but it seems like it’s designed to use the least amount of land and produce the most output. Are these more efficient methods really worse for the environment than other means?

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Please feel free to point me to sources for more reading on the subject!

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

It IS the most efficient mean, but its not the most sustainable method.

This is because conversion, in each level of food chain, only 10% of energy is transferred up.

This is why there is bio capacity. eco-system can only support so much animals, so when you set up a factory that vastly out paces the bio capacity of said region, you then need to artificially boost the production using other means. (fertilization), biomass/material taken from another system.

This is why one of the current fears is phosphorus depletion, as 90% of phosphor comes from phosphor rocks.

And to compound this issue, the product of the factory farm isn’t recycled back to the region, its shipped to another place, so what you essentially have is a factory that is constantly depleting regional biomass then import from another environment. This isn’t a cycle, and eventually, one or more part of the chain will become depleted.