Industrial livestock farming, also known as factory farming, is an intensive agricultural approach designed to maximize production while minimizing costs. It involves raising high numbers of livestock like cattle, pigs, and chickens in confined conditions at large-scale facilities known as CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). The livestock eat grain rather than grazing on pastures. Industrial farming has significant economic and food security benefits by increasing yields and efficiency at lower costs through practices like confining animals in concentrated areas to make the most of limited land. However, it primarily applies to common livestock animals like cattle, chickens, pigs, and increasingly other animals that are kept in very small areas of land to more easily manage high numbers with increased output.

1. What is Industrial Livestock farming?
Article by: Joel Manning
ndustrial livestock production, also known
by its opponents as factory farming, is a type
of intensive agriculture, specifically an
approach to animal husbandry designed to
maximize production, while minimizing
costs. Livestock farming, raising animals as
a source of food for people, has undergone a
substantial transformation over the past few
decades. Production of cattle, hogs, and
chickens has shifted from smaller, family-
owned farms to large-scale industrial
agricultural facilities often known as
concentrated animal feeding operations
(CAFOs). As part of that shift, cattle no
longer graze on pastures, but instead eat
grain.
BENEFITS OF INDUSTRIAL FARMING
At face value, it is hard to discount the
importance of this industry: the direct
contributions of livestock farming to the
economy are estimated at about 883 billion
dollars and this does not account for the
services that rely on it, ranging from
butchers, retailers, transport companies to
feed producers and equipment
manufacturers.
Beyond its economic value, livestock farming
supports the livelihoods and provides food
security to MORE THAN 1.3 billion people.
Today, it is one of the fastest growing sectors
of the agricultural economy. This has been
made possible through the increasing
intensification of livestock farming practices
which have helped increase yields and
efficiency while bringing down costs.
For example, the practice of concentrated
animal feeding operation, or CAFO, means
farmers can rear more animals by confining
them in concentrated areas maximizing the
potential of the land area they have at their
disposal.
Industrial livestock animals
This type of farming primarily applies to
cattle or dairy cows, chickens, goats, pigs,
horses and sheep but it is also increasingly
relevant for other animals such as donkeys,
mules, rabbits and insects such as bees
which are now being raised as part of
livestock farming. These and other livestock
are kept in a very small area of land which
makes livestock easier to manage while
increasing output for a smaller amount of
land.