There are loads of people that still have a farm, just for them too. Yes, it's generally in rural areas in the West. Yet for thousands of years, people often just farmed to feed themselves!
Factory farming sucks. Yet this can be fixed, note that you don't need to full grass feed (as an example) to end factory farming. You just need room for mild grazing. We can easily feed people as we do now, not have factory farming, but still not have the tens of thousands of acres of grassland to feed a herd for 100% grass grazing.
This is just one example.
End factory farming. You have my support for that. You'll lose it if you take my dinner away. I suspect many are the same.
When one of the most common responses to pointing out how awful factory farming is "well you can just buy from farms" when the reality is that 99% of consumption comes from factory farms, it's completely reasonable to associate the two
> We can easily feed people as we do now, not have factory farming, but still not have the tens of thousands of acres of grassland to feed a herd for 100% grass grazing.
Going to need a source for that because all the information i've seen shows that there is absolutely not enough land to be able to sustain the current levels of meat consumption.
You're sort of mixing up things here. Yes, there is enough land in some parts of the world (Canada, US), but that's not the point.
I specifically said not full grass feed. That's what people believe and assert there is not enough land for. You can still have some grass feeding, conjoined with grain feed. The animals get to be outside, have space to move around, but 1000 acres instead of 100k acres needed for full grass feeding the same herd.
As factory farms already feed those herds, clearly there's enough grain to feed them.
1. Feed Conversion Ratio is worse for pasture-raised vs. factory farmed so that's not a given - animals being able to move more, waste more calories that aren't being converted to meat
2. You still haven't provided a source for your claim about land usage
That said, cattle don't need cropland to graze. They just need land that can grow some grass, and space to move around.
Yes there is a higher calorie count for moving around compared to sitting in a box every day. So? It's fairly widely known that we throw away massive amounts of grain due to lack of market.
No, I won't be providing sources or references. I'm the source and reference. You of course can disagree.
If you don't like this path to end factory farming, you may choose another. However I will fight anyone taking my food away. I will at the same time, help those working towards traditional humane farming methods.
Choose which battle you prefer. One with allies, one with enemies. Decide which will get closer to your current goal, even if it doesn't fully align with mine, and others like me.
Change comes in steps, not leaps.
Yes I fully agree with that, you might be interested in this TED talk (linked in my original comment) https://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_bollard_how_to_end_factory_f... for what you can do about it
I agree that cows are an exception and live decent lives, but >95% of pigs, chickens, and fish are farmed in atrocious conditions, inside and outside the US: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farm...