CONTEMPORARY Issue No. 1 | Page 5

CONTEMPORARY OUR IMPACT by FOOD MATTERS Author: James Colquhoun Impact means, about factory farming and cattle, the consequences which are mainly the unpleasant results of do factory farming and cattle as part of the everyday living. And this title says OUR IMPACT, because all those unpleasant results are caused by humans and only by humans. When here and now, humans is referred to all those having or showing qualities, as rationality or fallibility, viewed as distinctive of people according to Collins. The biggest impact we have on the face of the planet right now would have to be through agriculture. It's clear when you’re fying on a plane and looking out the window that most of our interaction with the face of the planet, aside from housing, is via agriculture. This is actually having a huge ecological impact on the environment. The main degradation is through the process of factory farming and intensive commercial agricultural practices, such as monocropping. But today, let's focus specifically on factory farming Most of the agricultural produce and arable agricultural land in the US, Canada, and most of the world, is used to grow broad acre monocrops such as corn, wheat, and soy. And a large percent of these crops is used to feed animals in factory farm environments.These animals become the majority of the meat that we see in fast food outlets and in supermarkets worldwide. This type of agricultural practice is causing a huge strain on the environment as well as on the ecosystems which are connected to it. We even have situations where the runoff from these factory farms and monocrop practices are causing huge dead zones in the Mexican gulf and in other regions around the world. This is reducing the oxygen in the water in that area and causing a large kill-off of fish species in the water.