adminAgriculture column Tapuwa Justice Mashangwa
“FOR everything that is on this planet, a point of equilibrium should be attained”.
We tend to focus on making money, be it in agriculture, education, mining, business, tourism or other sectors that we at times sideline the impact of our desires, ambitions, projects and ventures on our environment.
I was doing my early morning research and I came across this interesting website and so my article this week is an extract from: <http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/06/02/distrubing-aerial-photos-show-what-killing-billions-of-animals-for-meat-is-doing-to-the-environment/>
Global food production today is a mess. Not only do we have millions of people opposing major biotech corporations for their use and production of GMOs and pesticides (for good reasons — backed by science), we are also completely destroying our environment with intensive animal farming.
They are called feedlots, officially referred to as “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation” (CAFO) and more commonly known as factory farms. They house thousands of animals in horrid conditions that breed disease and massive environmental degradation.
Despite this fact, they remain a non-issue to several major organisations whose job it is to raise awareness on the various issues contributing to our planet’s destruction at an exponential rate.
According to Farm Forward, after examining the numbers from a United States department of agriculture, they determined that 99 percent of farmed animals in the US were raised on feedlots.
We are talking about billions of animals raised for slaughter every year, and that is in the US alone. Globally, more than 70 billion of these animals are raised for slaughter every single year.
“Feedlots are a brilliant representation of how abstract our food industry has come.
It’s an efficient system for extracting the maximum yield from animals. That’s the world we live in now. We want to extract the maximum yield from everything, no matter what business you are in.
Did you know that the leading cause of rainforest destruction is our own food supply? We tear them down to make room for food crops and livestock grazing, and are doing so at an approximate rate of an entire football field’s worth of forest every single second.
Every single day, close to 100 plant/animal/insect species are lost because of this practice.
Did you know that in 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined?
Did you know that 51 percent (or more) of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture?
The billions of chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows raised for food each year in the US produce a tremendous amount of excrement, releasing methane and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Methane, which is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, accounts for nine percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions in this country.
And the 523 million chickens raised and killed each year in Delaware and Maryland alone, generate enough waste to fill the dome of the US Capitol about 50 times in a single year — or almost once a week.
And each cow emits approximately 66 to 79 gallons of methane every single day. There are currently 88 million cattle in the United States. You do the math. Together, these cows reportedly produce more methane than landfills, natural gas leaks and fracking.
If we are talking about human activity as one (of what could be many) factors contributing to environmental destruction and global climate change, why is it that factory farming is not included?
Questions I ask myself, the human condition I ponder upon, the value of our existence I contemplate and try to define and understand daily.
There is a place beyond the horizon and I choose to believe and have hope in the betterment of mankind. We are the only ones that can make our future green.
The writer is Tapuwa Justice Mashangwa, a young Bulawayo-based entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Emerald Agribusiness Consultancy. He can be contacted on +263739096418 or email: [email protected]
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