The damage modern industrial farming does is not always obvious because people have short memories. Where there were once forests and prairie with all their complex web of plants and animals, there are now just huge areas of ploughed earth. Enormous machines damage the soils and open it to being blown or washed away by wind and rain. They sow seeds of identical plants which are regularly sprayed with poisons to kill insects and diseases. They scatter artificial fertilisers. The machines themselves pollute the air with smoke and fumes while the poisons and fertilisers soak down into the soil or run off into streams and rivers. This pollution affects drinking water (so that in many places it has to be purified before it's fit to drink) and the animals and plants that live in the rivers and lakes and even the sea. This type of farming works against Nature. It regards Nature as 'the enemy' to be poisoned, burnt, cut and smashed. It creates vast areas of 'monoculture desert' - without any life but the crop.

Modern farming is on a collision course with nature. It now ranks equal with global warming in the scale of damage it is doing, says a team of leading environmental scientists headed by David Tilman (University of Minnesota, USA) [1]. That's bad news for everyone. Here's some of the worst worries:

• more people wanting to eat more meat means new farmland covering an area the size of the US will be needed. And where do you think that would come from? You got it (see next)...
• more forest and wild grassland will be destroyed, and more animals and plants will go extinct
• also, farm animal diseases will spread to humans with more epidemics likely and
• pollution from farming will get much worse. This will be partly from too much fertiliser and pesticides, but also from sewage (animal muck). Factory farms hold 10,000 or more animals and make as much sewage as human cities but, unlike cities, they don't have to treat it.

Not good, is it?

To really ram this point home, Fatal Harvest (available as a book from Island Press) shows that industrial farming is spoiling the soil and water it uses. It's seriously threatening world food supplies because it is the largest single threat to the earth’s biodiversity:

• ruining soils
• drying out precious water supplies
• polluting water
• destroying natural forest

To be fair, this type of farming started with the best of intentions: to feed people cheaply. It's been very good at doing this in those countries which could afford it, but that was largely because nobody paid the full costs caused by the pollution and other damage such farming causes. What's more, most governments in rich countries like those in Europe and North America subsidise (give money to) their farmers to make their products artificially cheaper. This business of 'true costs' is all very complicated I'm afraid.

For more on the damage done by factory farming, click the pig image to visit the GRACE Factory Farm Project.

To find out more facts and figures, visit

• the Union of Concerned Scientists: The Costs and Benefits of Industrial Agriculture Scroll down until you hit "The Costs of Industrial Agriculture" section
• the Centre for Environment and Society's The Real Cost of Farming
• CIWF "Eat less meat – It’s costing the earth"

1. New Scientist, 21/4/01, page 11.