Environmental impacts of animal agriculture

Examples of environmental impacts of animal agriculture: Meat production is a main driver of deforestation in Venezuela; Pigs in intensive farming; Testing Australian sheep for exhaled methane production to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture; Farms often pump their animal waste directly into a large lagoon, which has environmental consequences.

The environmental impacts of animal agriculture vary because of the wide variety of agricultural practices employed around the world. Despite this, all agricultural practices have been found to have a variety of effects on the environment to some extent. Animal agriculture, in particular meat production, can cause pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, disease, and significant consumption of land, food, and water. Meat is obtained through a variety of methods, including organic farming, free-range farming, intensive live nonhuman animal production, and subsistence agriculture. The livestock sector also includes wool, egg and dairy production, the livestock used for tillage, and fish farming.

Animal agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Cows, sheep, and other ruminants digest their food by enteric fermentation, and their burps are the main source of methane emissions from land use, land-use change, and forestry. Together with methane and nitrous oxide from manure, this makes livestock the main source of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.^[1][2][3][4] A significant reduction in meat consumption is essential to mitigate climate change, especially as the human population increases by a projected 2.3 billion by the middle of the century.^[5][6]