Affirmative's Case Study: Factory Farming

There is a call for the ongoing advancement of agricultural techniques. This, the affirmative side agrees upon. However, in order to do so, the current practices must be looked at from a critical standpoint and flaws must be recognized. Presently, standards only observe short-term returns and often ignore the superseding impact felt globally. Throughout the affirmative’s case, certain aspects of modern agriculture were portrayed as beneficial. Two main critiques that will flow throughout is the overall cost-benefit analysis was not taken into account and the level of implementation of the positive aspects.
One area of modern farming promoted by the affirmative is factory farming. The intention of this method is the increase output of livestock through concentrating the area used and more closely watching over the animals. However, studies of the implementation of this highlights severe ethical, humanitarian, and ecological concerns. In the majority of corporations that utilize this design, animals are packed tightly to the degree where
Through this, food prices are meant to be kept low and provide necessary nutrition for the world. However, clearly this is not the case. In much of the world, proper amounts of caloric intake are not reached. In addition, while cost may be comparatively low, current practices cannot provide long-term sustainability. Woodhouse (2010) argues that the existing approaches to modern agriculture are unsustainable. If present dominating practices continue at the rate in which they are used, any benefits currently seen will eventually be lost. In addition, negative impacts will inherently be exacerbated. Already every year, 12 X ha of arable land is lost as a consequence of current farming practices. In addition, only 10% of farmland in the United States is retaining soil composition at a sustainable rate (Pimental