![]() ![]() ![]() Nearly two-thirds of antibiotics important to human medicine in the United States are sold for use in livestock, not people. The widespread use of antibiotics in the meat production of animals that are not sick is contributing to the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance. Additionally, hog waste in particular has been called out by people living near CAFOs for its foul smell. We humans inhale these particles, which can cause heart and lung diseases and are said to account for at least 3.3 million deaths each year globally, and 17,900 deaths in the United States as of 2021. Manure emits ammonia that then combines with other air pollutants, like nitrogen oxides and sulfates, to create tiny-and deadly-solid particles. Livestock and their manure pollute our air too: Manure management alone accounts for 12 percent of all agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and 14.5 percent globally. Because chicken manure contains a higher percentage of phosphorus than other animal manure, it’s also prone to harming waterways with phosphorus runoff. Similar problems arise with poultry waste, which is mostly dry litter-a combination of the birds’ bedding materials (such as shavings), their feces, and loose feathers-that is stored in exposed, giant mounds. (Big storms like Hurricane Florence, which devastated North Carolina’s coast, make wide-scale spills and contamination even more likely.) And once this mixture, chock-full of phosphorus and nitrogen, gets into a waterbody, it causes a cascading reaction called eutrophication, or the destructive overgrowth of algae. They’re often unlined and are prone to overflows, leaks, and spills, causing the contents to leach into the soil and groundwater. The lagoons contain a toxic stew of antibiotics residue, chemicals, and bacteria decomposing the waste, a medley that can take on a sickly hue. To make matters worse, before it is applied to land, the manure usually sits on-site in vast manure lagoons that can grow to the size of a football field. Operators are supposed to apply only the amount that crops can use, but in reality, there is often too much manure-so it is applied beyond the ground’s natural absorption rate, leading to runoff into water sources. Instead, this waste is disposed of by spreading it, untreated, on land. But CAFOs don’t treat animal waste in the same way we treat human waste, by sending it to a wastewater treatment plant via a municipal sewer system. All of that farm animal waste needs to go somewhere. Livestock and poultry grown in the United States produce nearly 1.4 billion tons of manure annually, or almost five times the waste of the entire U.S. But many of the tools enabling this high-input, high-volume commodity agriculture have also contributed massive amounts of agricultural pollution.Ĭows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys do what all other animals do: poop. It’s this growth in productivity-also called vertical expansion-that’s been credited with skyrocketing yields and reducing the cost of food. In recent decades, we’ve also radically industrialized our methods and developed more resilient (and productive) crop species. In fact, the amount of land used for agriculture increased nearly sixfold in just a few centuries, between 17. ![]() In the thousands of years since, agriculture has undergone tremendous horizontal growth, meaning that humans have set aside more and more land to grow food. Agriculture transformed our way of life, giving us more consistent food supplies, allowing the growth of civilizations, and supporting an exponential boom in human population. Modern agriculture was born just 12,000 years ago, when we began to grow wild wheat and barley in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East and Mediterranean basin, and to tend the first rice paddies in the swamps of China. We fished in the ocean, hunted on land, and collected wild-growing fruits, seeds, and plants. For most of our history, humans were hunters and gatherers. ![]()
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