Viraj's Weblog

Another interesting quote from Eating Animals spoken by a factory farmer. This is perhaps the best argument for factory farms I've heard:

I've told you the drawbacks because I'm trying to be up-front with you. But in fact, we've got a tremendous system. Is it perfect? No. No system is perfect. And if you find someone who tells you he has a perfect way to feed billions and billions of people, well, you should take a careful look. You hear about free-range eggs and grass-fed cattle, and all of that's good. I think it's a good direction. But it ain't gonna feed the world. Never. You simply can't feed billions of people free-range eggs. And when you hear people talking about small farming as a model, I call that the Marie Antoinette syndrome: if they can't afford bread, let them eat cake. High-yield farming has allowed everyone to eat. Think about that. If we go away from it, it may improve the welfare of the animal, it may even be better for the environment, but I don't want to go back to China in 1918. I'm talking about starving people.

Granted, it's a bit one-sided. Of course people could stop eating meat, but the idea of feeding billions any type of food that they can afford is going to result in large-scale factories of some sort. Quality is going to suffer, and problems like long-term effects of genetic engineering of foods will arise, but to feed the population of the world, family farms likely won't cut it. It's a huge demand for cheap food, and that demand grows with the population.

Do you think family farms are going to sustain a world of ten billion?