Environmental impacts of animal agriculture in the context of "Land consumption"

Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are large: the agriculture, forestry and land use sectors contribute between 13% and 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Direct greenhouse gas emissions include those from rice and livestock farming. Indirect emissions from the conversion of non-agricultural land such as forests into agricultural land are also very important. With regards to direct emissions, nitrous oxide and methane makeup over half of total greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. A 2023 review emphasizes that emissions from agricultural soils are shaped by factors such as soil type, climate, and management practices. It also highlights several mitigation strategies, including conservation tillage, precision agriculture, improved water use, and the application of biochar, that can reduce emissions and enhance soil carbon storage.

Furthermore, there is also fossil fuel consumption for transport and fertilizer production. For example, the manufacture and use of nitrogen fertilizer contributes around 5% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock farming is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Intensive animal farming, industrial livestock production, and macro-farms, also known as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture used by the meat and dairy industry to maximize animal production while minimizing costs. To achieve this, agribusinesses keep livestock such as cattle, poultry, and fish at high stocking densities, at large scale, and using modern machinery, biotechnology, and pharmaceutics. The main products are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption.

While intensive animal farming can produce large amounts of animal products at a low cost with reduced human labor, it is controversial as it raises several ethical concerns, including animal welfare issues (confinement, mutilations, stress-induced aggression, breeding complications), harm to the environment and wildlife (greenhouse gases, deforestation, eutrophication), increased use of cropland to produce animal feed, public health risks (zoonotic diseases, pandemic risks, antibiotic resistance), and worker exploitation, particularly of undocumented workers. The animal agriculture industry has been accused of actively supporting disinformation campaigns and preventing policies to address climate change.

Insects as feed are insect species used as animal feed, either for livestock, including aquaculture, or as pet food.

As livestock feed production uses ~33% of the world's agricultural cropland use, insects might be able to supplement livestock feed. They can transform low-value organic wastes, are nutritious and have low environmental impacts. However, recent studies have shown that the carbon impact of insect proteins is higher than that of soybean meal or fish meal, reducing their environmental benefits.

The meat industry are the people and companies engaged in modern industrialized livestock agriculture for the production, packing, preservation and marketing of meat (in contrast to dairy products, wool, etc.). In economics, the meat industry is a fusion of primary (agriculture) and secondary (industry) activity and hard to characterize strictly in terms of either one alone. The greater part of the meat industry is the meat packing industry – the segment that handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of animals such as poultry, cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock.

A great portion of the ever-growing meat branch in the food industry involves intensive animal farming in which livestock are kept almost entirely indoors or in restricted outdoor settings like pens. Many aspects of the raising of animals for meat have become industrialized, even many practices more associated with smaller family farms, e.g. gourmet foods such as foie gras. This heavy industrialization leads to an outsized environmental impact, responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions, land use change and degradation, and water, air and soil pollution.