From Factory Farms to Forest Loss: The Hidden Crisis Behind Our Food Choices

Sometimes, it hits you in the quiet moments – a walk through a once-bustling woodland now eerily still, the Buddleja ‘butterfly’ bush with no butterflies, or the absence of bees in a summer garden. The signs are all around us: nature is in trouble. On World Environment Day, I find myself thinking not just about the planet, but about the choices we make every day – especially what we eat. Because behind every meal lies a story, and right now, too many of those stories are ones of loss.

From the depths of the oceans to the peaks of the highest mountains, life on Earth has flourished for billions of years in breathtaking diversity.Wonderfully diverse civilisations have evolved, powered by an abundance of natural riches. The world is now home to more than 8 billion people and a multitude of different plants and animals, all with their part to play in the complex web of life. 

Yet nature is now in emergency mode and time is running out. To keep global warming below 1.5°C this century, we must halve annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Without action, exposure to air pollution beyond safe guidelines will increase by 50 per cent within the decade and plastic waste flowing into aquatic ecosystems will nearly triple by 2040.

In the last fifty years, according to WWF’s Living Planet report, the total number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish has declined by 73 per cent. 

It’s no exaggeration to say that what happens over the next five years will determine the future for life on Earth. 

Food for thought

And the primary reason for all this destruction? Our food. 

Planet-wide, the way we feed ourselves has become a dominant activity, affecting wildlife and the natural ecosystems on which our existence depends. Nearly half the world’s habitable land surface and most human water use is devoted to agriculture. 

Industrial agriculture – factory farming – is the most damaging. More than 80 billion farmed animals are produced for food every year, two-thirds of them on factory farms. 

Before factory farming, animals were out on pasture, turning things we can’t eat, like grass, into things we can eat in the form of meat, milk and eggs. 

Now confined to cages, barren warehouses, or feedlots, they are fed on food crops like corn, wheat, and soya which could otherwise have fed billions of hungry people. 

This creates ‘ghost food waste’, where crops that could alleviate hunger are being wasted. The fact is that factory farmed animals are hugely inefficient at converting grain into meat or milk. Much of the food value is wasted. Making it the biggest single area of food waste on the planet.

But the harm doesn’t end there: animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than all of the world’s planes, trains and cars combined. 

Yet the global farmed animal population is expected to continue to grow, further stepping up the pressure on a natural world in steep decline. 

Betraying Mother Nature

As agriculture expands at the expense of dwindling forests, wildlife disappears. 

This happens even more so when farming and nature part company as with industrial animal agriculture. 

In this way, meat production has become just another industry, churning out raw materials in a way that is commonly presented as efficient but in fact is grossly wasteful.

We seemed to have switched our focus from feeding people to a wasteful pursuit of commodity production at any cost. More than half of all the world’s food now either rots, is dumped in landfill, or feeds those long-suffering imprisoned animals. 

Whole landscapes have been swept away by monocultures – vast prairie-like carpets of uniform crops. Birds, bees and butterflies, along with the insects and plants they feed on, are in decline. Chemical fertilisers and pesticide sprays have replaced time-honoured natural ways of keeping soil fertile and problem bugs at bay. 

Farmed animals have been disappearing from fields and into confinement. Egg-laying hens in battery cages, pigs in narrow crates or barren pens, chickens for meat growing so fast that their legs can barely support their outsized bodies. Nature has been replaced by a horror show.

Hidden Impact of Animal Feed

So, how did this happen? Well, part of the answer is that the food system has become hijacked by the animal-feed industry. Today, more than one-third of the entire global cereal harvest, and nearly all of the world’s soya, is devoted to feeding industrially reared animals – food enough for more than 4 billion extra people. 

Paradoxically, we still hear talk of looming global food crises. 

Yet, the fact that there’s already more than enough food for everybody is routinely ignored. 

The planet is now at a dangerous tipping point but it is not too late to prevent more destruction. 

What we put on our plate has never mattered more. Eating more plants and choosing organic, pasture-fed, or free range, meat, milk, and eggs really can make a big difference for the future of animals, people, and the countryside. 

This World Environment Day, let’s recognise that the power to change course lies in our hands. By rethinking what we eat and how it’s produced, we can help restore balance to our planet. Every meal is a chance to vote for a food system that nourishes both people and the Earth. The future is as yet unwritten – but with conscious choices, we can help ensure it’s one where nature, animals, and humanity can all thrive.

Note: This is a version of an article that first appeared in The Scotsman on Friday 30^th May, 2025

Main Image: Credit: StockstudioX