How to Build a More Energy Efficient Food System

The shift to a more sustainable food system just got a significant boost in Europe. In a first for the European Union, a French start-up filed the industry’s first application in July for market access for lab-grown foie gras. And the UK became the first European country to approve lab-grown meat for pet food. This is game changing. Contrast this with the United States, where politically conservative states Florida and Alabama just banned lab-grown meat, as the food wars in America get more political by the day.

European and American industrial agricultural giants are keen to squash challenges like this to Big Food’s business as usual. Lab-grown meat, and other needed changes to the current food system, like a prioritization of plant-forward diets, are a threat to their business model. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), known as factory farms, produce over 90 percent of the animal products that people consume. And yet they are leading to the collapse of smallholder farms and farming communities, which is why a transition away from industrial animal agriculture is needed now more than ever.

While the planet needs this transition off industrial animal agriculture to happen as soon as possible – as it’s responsible for up to 20 percent of global greenhouse emissions – it’s also critical for farmers and their communities. Here’s why:

First, farming communities’ health is at stake. Industrial agriculture does little to protect these communities, and instead fights regulation that’s designed to protect the public health of residents living near factory farms.

Take animal waste. In US states where animal waste isn’t carefully regulated, like in North Carolina, CAFOs spray the contents of these cesspools—manure and all—into the air and onto neighboring communities, increasing their risks of cancer, respiratory diseases, and death. And fecal matter from factory farms seeps into creeks and waterways downstream. In the EU, the same pollutants exist, of course, but the Industrial Emissions Directive was updated this year with stricter standards for industrial emissions in an effort to reduce air, water and soil pollution. A step in the right direction, of course, but still a polluting problem.

Take farm locations. In the EU, research consistently shows that anyone living near a factory farm faces serious health consequences – from air toxicity, chronic disease and water pollution, to being stuck in the middle of dangerous pathogenic breeding grounds. In the US, factory farms are disproportionately located in Black, Brown, and low-income communities already facing higher rates of chronic disease and inequitable health outcomes. These communities were hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, when essential workers in slaughterhouses were given inadequate protective gear, forced to work in close quarters, and died at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population. And since factory farms are hotspots for the next bird flu, the next swine flu, or the next global pandemic, these communities will continue to be hardest hit.

Take working conditions. Factory farm conditions are treacherous no matter which side of the Atlantic Ocean the worker resides. European and American farm workers in meat slaughtering, processing, and packaging facilities face extremely high risks of debilitating physical injury and chronic pain, sexual assault and violent crime, exposure to toxic levels of particulate matter and fecal bacteria, drug and alcohol abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s painfully clear how industrial animal agriculture is endangering the wellbeing of both farmers and their communities, and if we wanted to save lives, farmer health is where we’d start.

Second, farming communities’ economic futures and freedoms are at stake. Highly consolidated industrial agriculture depresses wages and overproduces crops and livestock – all to the detriment of small family farms and farm workers.

This agricultural consolidation has taken its toll. European farmers now blame Big Food as farmer incomes have been decreasing by 22 percent over recent years. U.S. farm income is similarly headed for its biggest plunge in nearly two decades, with farm workers making 40 percent less than non-agricultural workers and farm debt is at an all-time high.

Dairy farmers in Europe and the US, as just one industrial animal agriculture example, are being crowded out by their corporate counterparts. Industrial-scale operations are dropping wholesale prices to below-profitable rates and squeezing smaller farm operations and independent producers out of markets. That’s happening in the US and in Europe.

The same is happening to pig farmers in Europe and the US. In the US, due to monopolization in the industry, hog farmers saw a decline over the last three decades in median household income and the number of total wage jobs. Farmers are now earning less and less per pound of pork and feed grain. Small European pig farmers are also having to close their doors due to Big Food’s industrial-scale competition.

This status quo isn’t sustainable for anyone—least of all our farmers. The hard truth is that a factory-farmed food system continues to put the majority of European and American farmers at risk of physical harm, economic devastation, and continued dependence on highly consolidated industry that doesn’t care about their survival.

Transforming our food system to put farmers and their communities first requires a just transition away from industrial animal agriculture. The global shift towards plant-forward diets—with 70 percent of the world’s population ditching meat for personal health and planetary health reasons—is a huge boon for farmers, provided governments help farmers meet this growing demand. This is the future of farming.

The good news is that alternative proteins and plant-forward approaches are also farmer friendly. Lab-raised meat isn’t the enemy, say farmers, and farming for plant-based diets avoids the majority of the dangers posed above with industrial animal agriculture. If national governments truly cared about European and American farmers—their health, pocketbooks and freedoms—they’d do more than wage theatrical warfare with bills that prevent new market share opportunities for farmers. They’d lean into the growing consumer demand for alternative proteins and plants, and lots of them. That’s what being farmer friendly looks like.