User:WAS 4.250/8

The challenges and issues of industrial agriculture for global and local society, for the industrial agriculture industry, for the individual industrial agriculture farm, and for animal rights include the costs and benefits of both current practices and proposed changes to those practices. Current industrial agriculture practices are temporarily increasing the carrying capacity of the Earth for humans while slowly destroying the long term carrying capacity of the earth for humans causing the necessity of shifting to a sustainable agriculture form of industrial agriculture. This is a continuation of thousands of years of the invention and use of technologies in feeding ever growing populations.

''[W]hen hunter-gatherers with growing populations depleted the stocks of game and wild foods across the Near East, they were forced to introduce agriculture. But agriculture brought much longer hours of work and a less rich diet than hunter-gatherers enjoyed. Further population growth among shifting slash-and-burn farmers led to shorter fallow periods, falling yields and soil erosion. Plowing and fertilizers were introduced to deal with these problems - but once again involved longer hours of work and degradation of soil resources(Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, Allen and Unwin, 1965, expanded and updated in Population and Technology, Blackwell, 1980.).''

While the point of industrial agriculture is lower cost products to create greater productivity thus a higher standard of living as measured by available goods and services, industrial methods have side effects both good and bad. Further, industrial agriculture is not some single indivisible thing, but instead is comprised of numerous separate elements, each of which can be modified, and in fact is modified in response to market conditions, government regulation, and scientific advances. So the question then becomes for each specific element that goes into an industrial agriculture method or technique or process: What bad side effects are bad enough that the financial gain and good side effects are outweighed? Different interest groups not only reach different conclusions on this, but also recommend differing solutions, which then become factors in changing both market conditions and government regulations.

Society
The major challenges and issues faced by society concerning industrial agriculture include:

Maximizing the benefits:
 * Cheap and plentiful food
 * Convenience for the consumer
 * The contribution to our economy on many levels, from growers to harvesters to processors to sellers

while minimizing the downsides:
 * Environmental and social costs
 * Damage to fisheries
 * Cleanup of surface and groundwater polluted with animal waste
 * Increased health risks from pesticides
 * Increased ozone pollution and global warming from heavy use of fossil fuels

Cheap and plentiful food
Very roughly:
 * 30,000 years ago hunter-gatherer behavior feed 6 million people
 * 3,000 years ago primitive agriculture feed 60 million people
 * 300 years ago intensive agriculture feed 600 million people
 * Today industrial agriculture feeds 6000 million people
 * In the future sustainable agriculture will feed maybe twice that many people.

An example of industrial agriculture providing cheap and plentiful food is the U.S.'s "most successful program of agricultural development of any country in the world". Between 1930 and 2000 U.S. agricultural productivity (output divided by all inputs) rose by an average of about 2 percent annually causing food prices paid by consumers to decrease. "The percentage of U.S. disposable income spent on food prepared at home decreased, from 22 percent as late as 1950 to 7 percent by the end of the century."

Convenience and choice
Industrial agriculture treats farmed products in terms of minimizing inputs and maximizing outputs at every stage from the natural resources of sun, land and water to the consumer which results in a vertically integrated industry that genetically manipulates crops and livestock; and processes, packages, and markets in whatever way generates maximum return on investment creating convenience foods many customers will pay a premium for. A consumer backlash against food sold for taste, convenience, and profit rather than nutrition and other values (e.g. reduce waste, be natural, be ethical) has led the industry to also provide organic food, minimally processed foods, and minimally packaged foods to maximally satisfy all segments of society thus generating maximum return on investment.

Environment
Industrial agriculture uses huge amounts of water, energy, and industrial chemicals; increasing pollution in the arable land, useable water and atmosphere. Herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers, and animal waste products are accumulating in ground and surface waters. "Many of the negative effects of industrial agriculture are remote from fields and farms. Nitrogen compounds from the Midwest, for example, travel down the Mississippi to degrade coastal fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. But other adverse effects are showing up within agricultural production systems -- for example, the rapidly developing resistance among pests is rendering our arsenal of herbicides and insecticides increasingly ineffective."

Social
A study done for the US. Office of Technology Assessment conducted by the UC Davis Macrosocial Accounting Project concluded that industrial agriculture is associated with substantial deterioration of human living conditions in nearby rural communities.

Industrial agriculture industry
According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, the major challenges and issues faced by the industrial agriculture industry are:
 * marketing challenges and consumer tastes
 * international trading environment (world market conditions, barriers to trade, quarantine and technical barriers, maintenance of global competitiveness and market image, and management of biosecurity issues affecting imports and the disease status of exports)
 * biosecurity (pests and diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), avian influenza, foot and mouth disease, citrus canker, and sugarcane smut)
 * infrastructure (such as transport, ports, telecommunications, energy and irrigation facilities)
 * management skills and labor supply (With increasing requirements for business planning, enhanced market awareness, the use of modern technology such as computers and global positioning systems and better agronomic management, modern farm managers will need to become increasingly skilled. Examples: training of skilled workers, the development of labor hire systems that provide continuity of work in industries with strong seasonal peaks, modern communication tools, investigating market opportunities, researching customer requirements, business planning including financial management, researching the latest farming techniques, risk management skills)
 * coordination (a more consistent national strategic agenda for agricultural research and development; more active involvement of research investors in collaboration with research providers developing programs of work; greater coordination of research activities across industries, research organisations and issues; and investment in human capital to ensure a skilled pool of research personnel in the future.)
 * technology (research, adoption, productivity, genetically modified (GM) crops, investments)
 * water (access rights, water trade, providing water for environmental outcomes, assignment of risk in response to reallocation of water from consumptive to environmental use, accounting for the sourcing and allocation of water)
 * resource access issues (management of native vegetation, the protection and enhancement of biodiversity, sustainability of productive agricultural resources, landholder responsibilities)

Biosecurity
The biosecurity concerns facing industrial agriculture can be illustrated by:
 * the threat to poultry and humans from H5N1; possibly caused by use of animal vaccines
 * the threat to cattle and humans from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE); possibly caused by the unnatural feeding of cattle to cattle to minimize costs
 * and the threat to industry profits from diseases like foot-and-mouth disease and citrus canker which increasing globalization makes harder to contain.

Avian influenza
Use of animal vaccines can create new viruses that kill people and cause flu pandemic threats. H5N1 is an example of where this might have already occurred. According to the CDC article H5N1 Outbreaks and Enzootic Influenza by Robert G. Webster et. al.:"Transmission of highly pathogenic H5N1 from domestic poultry back to migratory waterfowl in western China has increased the geographic spread. The spread of H5N1 and its likely reintroduction to domestic poultry increase the need for good agricultural vaccines. In fact, the root cause of the continuing H5N1 pandemic threat may be the way the pathogenicity of H5N1 viruses is masked by co-circulating influenza viruses or bad agricultural vaccines." Dr. Robert Webster explains: "If you use a good vaccine you can prevent the transmission within poultry and to humans. But if they have been using vaccines now [in China] for several years, why is there so much bird flu? There is bad vaccine that stops the disease in the bird but the bird goes on pooping out virus and maintaining it and changing it. And I think this is what is going on in China. It has to be. Either there is not enough vaccine being used or there is substandard vaccine being used. Probably both. It’s not just China. We can’t blame China for substandard vaccines. I think there are substandard vaccines for influenza in poultry all over the world." In response to the same concerns, Reuters reports Hong Kong infectious disease expert Lo Wing-lok saying, "The issue of vaccines has to take top priority," and Julie Hall, in charge of the WHO's outbreak response in China, saying China's vaccinations might be masking the virus." The BBC reported that Dr Wendy Barclay, a virologist at the University of Reading, UK said: "The Chinese have made a vaccine based on reverse genetics made with H5N1 antigens, and they have been using it. There has been a lot of criticism of what they have done, because they have protected their chickens against death from this virus but the chickens still get infected; and then you get drift - the virus mutates in response to the antibodies - and now we have a situation where we have five or six 'flavours' of H5N1 out there."

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as "mad cow disease", is a fatal, neurodegenerative disease of cattle, which infects by a mechanism that surprised biologists upon its discovery in the late 20th century. In the UK, the country worst affected, 179,000 cattle were infected and 4.4 million killed as a precaution.

The disease can be transmitted to human beings who eat or inhale material from infected carcasses. In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD or nvCJD), and by June 2007, it had killed 165 people in Britain, and six elsewhere with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period. Between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had entered the human food chain before controls on high-risk offal were introduced in 1989.

A British inquiry into BSE concluded that the epidemic was caused by feeding cattle, who are normally herbivores, the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread. The origin of the disease itself remains unknown. The current scientific view is that infectious proteins called prions developed through spontaneous mutation, probably in the 1970s, and there is a possibility that the use of organophosphorus pesticides increased the susceptibility of cattle to the disease. The infectious agent is distinctive for the high temperatures it is able to survive; this contributed to the spread of the disease in Britain, which had reduced the temperatures used during its rendering process. Another contributory factor was the feeding of infected protein supplements to very young calves instead of milk from their mothers.

Foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious and sometimes fatal viral disease of cattle and pigs. It can also infect deer, goats, sheep, and other bovids with cloven hooves, as well as elephants, rats, and hedgehogs. Humans are affected only very rarely.

FMD occurs throughout much of the world, and while some countries have been free of FMD for some time, its wide host range and rapid spread represent cause for international concern. In 1996, endemic areas included Asia, Africa, and parts of South America. North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have been free of FMD for many years. Most European countries have been recognized as free, and countries belonging to the European Union have stopped FMD vaccination.

Infection with foot-and-mouth disease tends to occur locally, that is, the virus is passed on to susceptible animals through direct contact with infected animals or with contaminated pens or vehicles used to transport livestock. The clothes and skin of animal handlers such as farmers, standing water, and uncooked food scraps and feed supplements containing infected animal products can harbor the virus as well. Cows can also catch FMD from the semen of infected bulls. Control measures include quarantine and destruction of infected livestock, and export bans for meat and other animal products to countries not infected with the disease.

Because FMD rarely infects humans but spreads rapidly among animals, it is a much greater threat to the agriculture industry than to human health. Farmers around the world can lose huge amounts of money during a foot-and-mouth epidemic, when large numbers of animals are destroyed and revenues from milk and meat production go down.

One of the difficulties in vaccinating against FMD is the huge variation between and even within serotypes. There is no cross-protection between serotypes (meaning that a vaccine for one serotype won't protect against any others) and in addition, two strains within a given serotype may have nucleotide sequences that differ by as much as 30% for a given gene. This means that FMD vaccines must be highly specific to the strain involved. Vaccination only provides temporary immunity that lasts from months to years.

Citrus canker
Citrus canker is a disease affecting citrus species that is caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas axonopodis. Infection causes lesions on the leaves, stems, and fruit of citrus trees, including lime, oranges, and grapefruit. While not harmful to humans, canker significantly affects the vitality of citrus trees, causing leaves and fruit to drop prematurely; a fruit infected with canker is safe to eat but too unsightly to be sold.

The disease, which is believed to have originated in South East Asia, is extremely persistent when it becomes established in an area, making it necessary for all citrus orchards to be destroyed for successful eradication of the disease. Australia, Brazil and the United States are currently suffering from canker outbreaks.

The disease can be detected in orchards and on fruit by the appearance of lesions. Early detection is critical in quarantine situations. Bacteria are tested for pathogenicity by inoculating multiple citrus species with the bacterium. Simultaneously, other diagnostic tests (antibody detection, fatty-acid profiling, and genetic procedures using PCR) are conducted to identify the particular canker strain.

Citrus canker outbreaks are prevented and managed in a number of ways. In countries that do not have canker, the disease is prevented from entering the country by quarantine measures. In countries with new outbreaks, eradication programs that are started soon after the disease has been discovered have been successful; such programs rely on destruction of affected orchards. When eradication has been unsuccessful and the disease has become established, management options include replacing susceptible citrus cultivars with resistant cultivars, applying preventive sprays of copper-based bactericides, and destroying infected trees and all surrounding trees within an appropriate radius.

The citrus industry is the largest fresh-fruit exporting industry in Australia. Australia has had three outbreaks of citrus canker; two were successfully eradicated and one is ongoing. The disease was found twice during the 1900s in the Northern Territory and was eradicated each time. During the first outbreak in 1912, every citrus tree north of latitude 19° South was destroyed, taking 11 years to eradicate the disease. In 2004, Asiatic citrus canker was detected in an orchard in Emerald, Queensland, and was thought to have occurred from the illegal import of infected citrus plants. The state and federal governments have ordered that all commercial orchards, all non-commercial citrus tress, and all native lime trees (C. glauca) in the vicinity of Emerald be destroyed rather than trying to isolate infected trees.

Individual industrial agriculture farm
Major challenges and issues faced by individual industrial agriculture farms include:
 * integrated farming systems
 * crop sequencing
 * water use efficiency
 * nutrient audits
 * herbicide resistance
 * financial instruments (such as futures and options)
 * collect and understand own farm information;
 * knowing your products
 * knowing your markets
 * knowing your customers
 * satisfying customer needs
 * securing an acceptable profit margin
 * cost of servicing debt;
 * ability to earn and access off-farm income;
 * management of machinery and stewardship investments.

Integrated farming systems
An integrated farming system is a progressive biologically integrated sustainable agriculture system such as Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture or Zero waste agriculture whose implementation requires exacting knowledge of the interactions of numerous species and whose benefits include sustainability and increased profitability.

Elements of this integration can include:
 * intentionally introducing flowering plants into agricultural ecosystems to increase pollen-and nectar-resources required by natural enemies of insect pests
 * using crop rotation and cover crops to suppress nematodes in potatoes

Crop sequencing
Crop rotation or crop sequencing is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same space in sequential seasons for various benefits such as to avoid the build up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one species is continuously cropped. Crop rotation also seeks to balance the fertility demands of various crops to avoid excessive depletion of soil nutrients. A traditional component of crop rotation is the replenishment of nitrogen through the use of green manure in sequence with cereals and other crops. It is one component of polyculture. Crop rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants.

Water use efficiency
Crop irrigation accounts for 70% of the world's fresh water use. The agricultural sector of most countries is important both economically and politically, and water subsidies are common. Conservation advocates have urged removal of all subsidies to force farmers to grow more water-efficient crops and adopt less wasteful irrigation techniques.

For crop irrigation, optimal water efficiency means minimizing losses due to evaporation or runoff. An Evaporation pan can be used to determine how much water is required to irrigate the land. Flood irrigation, the oldest and most common type, is often very uneven in distribution, as parts of a field may receive excess water in order to deliver sufficient quantities to other parts. Overhead irrigation, using center-pivot or lateral-moving sprinklers, gives a much more equal and controlled distribution pattern, but in extremely dry conditions much of the water may evaporate befare it reaches the ground. Drip irrigation is the most expensive and least-used type, but offers the best results in delivering water to plant roots with minimal losses.

As changing irrigation systems can be a costly undertaking, conservation efforts often concentrate on maximizing the efficiency of the existing system. This may include chiseling compacted soils, creating furrow dikes to prevent runoff, and using soil moisture and rainfall sensors to optimize irrigation schedules.

Water catchment management measures include recharge pits, which capture rainwater and runoff and use it to recharge ground water supplies. This helps in the formation of ground water wells etc. and eventually reduces soil erosion caused due to running water.

Nutrient audits
Better nutrient audits allow farmers to spend less money on nutrients and to create less pollution since less nutrient is added to the soil and thus there is less to run off and pollute. Methodologies for assessing soil nutrient balances have been studied and used for farms and entire countries for decades. But at present "there is no standard methodology for calculating nutrient budgets and there are no accepted 'benchmarks' figures against which to assess farm nutrient use efficiency. [A standard methodology] for calculating nutrient budgets on farms [is hoped to help reduce] diffuse water and air pollution from agriculture [through] best management practices in the use of fertilisers and organic manures, as part of the continued development of economically and environmentally sustainable farming systems."

Herbicide resistance
In agriculture large scale and systematic weeding is usually required, often by machines, such as liquid herbicide sprayers. Selective herbicides kill specific targets while leaving the desired crop relatively unharmed. Some of these act by interfering with the growth of the weed and are often based on plant hormones. Weed control through herbicide is made more difficult when the weeds become resistant to the herbicide. Solutions include:
 * using a different herbicide
 * using a different crop (e.g. genetically altered to be herbicide resistant; which ironically can create herbicide resistant weeds through horizontal gene transfer)
 * ploughing
 * ground cover such as mulch or plastic
 * manual removal

Animal rights in industrial farming
According to George Schedier in Social Theory and Practice: "'Factory farms' refers to those plants where large numbers of animals, who live a miserable and even terrified existence, are raised in confined spaces for purposes of minimizing the costs of meat production."

According to Mark Floegel in the Multinational Monitor: "[C]onfined animal feeding operations [are] also known as factory farms, in the United States (U.S.)."

According to Tanya Tolchin in the Multinational Monitor: "Rather than being controlled by individuals who generally live on the premises, livestock factories are controlled by corporate entities which often hire outside workforces or use family farmers as 'franchises' or contractors to produce their pigs and chickens. On the giant factory farms, the corporate entity owns the farm animals; the contractors raise the animals and provide the buildings. The corporation pays the contractors on a per-head basis. The poultry industry pioneered the factory farm approach more than 25 years ago. In the early 1980s, factory hog operations emerged in the Southeast and parts of the Midwest. Now they are spreading like a prairie fire across the U.S. heartland. In the last 15 years, the number of hog farms has dropped from 600,000 to 157,000 while the number of hogs raised in the United States has remained constant."

According to the Wisconsin Stewardship Network : "Definition: A Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) or factory farm or large farming operation is defined by federal and state statute as a facility that contains 1,000 animal units. The calculation of animal units varies by type of animal. For dairy cattle, a facility that contains 700 milking and dry cows is considered a CAFO."

Proponents of factory farming argue that it makes food production more efficient, that the animals are looked after in state-of-the-art confinement facilities and are content, that it is needed to feed the growing global human population, and that it protects the environment. Opponents argue that it harms the environment, creates health risks, and abuses animals. The practice has become increasingly unpopular in Europe due to a series of events associated with modern farming techniques, including incidents of swine fever, BSE, foot and mouth and bird flu together with concern over animal welfare.

Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the basic interests of non-human animals — for example, the interest in avoiding suffering — should be afforded the same consideration as the basic interests of human beings. Animal rights advocates argue that animals should no longer be regarded as property, or treated as resources for human purposes, but should instead be regarded as legal persons and members of the moral community.

The idea of extending personhood to animals has the support of some senior legal scholars, including Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, and animal law courses are now taught in 89 out of 180 law schools in the United States. The Seattle-based Great Ape Project is campaigning for the United Nations to adopt a Declaration on Great Apes, which would see gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos included in a "community of equals" with human beings, extending to them the protection of three basic interests: the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. This is seen by an increasing number of animal rights lawyers as a first step toward granting rights to other animals.

Critics of the concept of animal rights argue that animals do not have the capacity to enter into a social contract or make moral choices, and therefore cannot be regarded as possessors of moral rights. The philosopher Roger Scruton argues that only human beings have duties and that "[t]he corollary is inescapable: we alone have rights." Critics holding this position argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with using animals for food, as entertainment, and in research, though human beings may nevertheless have an obligation to ensure they do not suffer unnecessarily. This position is generally called the animal welfare position, and it is held by some of the oldest of the animal protection agencies.

Animal welfare
Animal welfare is the viewpoint that animals, especially those under human care, should not suffer unnecessarily, including where the animals are used for food, work, companionship, or research. This position usually focuses on the morality of human action (or inaction), as opposed to making deeper political or philosophical claims about the status of animals, as is the case for an animal rights viewpoint. For this reason animal welfare organizations may use the word humane in their title or position statements.

Battery cage
In agriculture, battery cages (called laying cages in the United States) are a confinement system used primarily for egg-laying hens.

The use of laying batteries increased gradually, becoming the dominant method somewhat before the integration of the egg industry in the Sixties. In 1990, North and Bell reported that 75% of all commercial layers in the world and 95% in the U.S. were kept in cages.

They have been condemned by animal protection organizations and there have been moves to enact laws to ban them.On June 17, 1999 the European Union announced a Europe-wide ban on battery-hen cages by the year 2012.

Foie gras controversy
The controversial production of foie gras (the liver of a duck or a goose that has been specially fattened) involves force-feeding birds more food than they would eat in the wild, and much more than they would voluntarily eat domestically. The feed, usually corn boiled with fat (to facilitate ingestion), deposits large amounts of fat in the liver, thereby producing the buttery consistency sought by the gastronome.

Gestation crate
A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a 7 ft by 2 ft metal enclosure in which a female breeding pig (sow) may be confined during pregnancy, and in effect for most of her adult life.

Between 60 and 70 percent of sows are confined in crates during pregnancy in the United States, each pregnancy lasting four months, with an average of 2.5 litters every year. Sows, who can weigh 600 lbs, spend most of their three or four years of adult life in crates, giving birth to between five and eight litters. As the sows grow larger, they no longer fit in the crates, and must sleep on their chests, unable to turn, until they are slaughtered. The crates are usually placed side by side in rows of 20 sows per row and 100 rows per shed, the floors of the crates slatted to allow excrement to fall into a pit below.

Pork producers and many veterinarians argue that gestation crates are needed because sows who are housed together in pens will fight. According to the U.S. National Pork Producers Council, the American Veterinary Medical Association "recognize[s] gestation stalls and group housing systems as appropriate for providing for the well-being of sows during pregnancy." Animal welfare advocates regard the use of gestation crates as one of the most inhumane features of factory farming. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University's Department of Animal Science &mdash; and a member of a McDonald's panel of experts who advise on industry best practice &mdash; has said: "I think gestation crates for pigs are a real problem ... I mean basically you’re asking a sow to live in an airline seat."