Welcome to Farm Forward

In the last 70 years—a tiny blip in the history of farming—cruel, unsustainable factory farms have come to produce more than 99 percent1 of the animals grown in the United States. Globally, livestock now cover 30 percent of the earth’s surface,2 and as a result of modern fishing techniques, scientists are measuring an overall drop in the health and diversity of ocean life. During this same period, these new farming methods have devastated rural communities by reducing the number of farmers in the nation by 85 percent—even as the U.S. population more than doubled.3 Given this scale, it is no surprise that the choices we make when we eat and produce food have a bigger impact on animal suffering, global warming,4 and other major environmental concerns than anything else we do.

Never in the history of animal agriculture have consumption habits and production methods changed so radically and with such disastrous effects. With your support, we are building an anti-factory farming movement that unites small farmer and animal activist, herbivore and omnivore, food industry executive and consumer, poet and academic, ecologist and theologian. Modernizing farming was a good idea, but turning farms into factories was simply a mistake. It’s a recent mistake and, together, we’re going to correct it.

1. 1. Farm Forward calculation based on U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2002 Census of Agriculture, June 2004; and Environmental Protection Agency, Producers’ Compliance Guide for CAFOs, August 2003.
2. 2. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2007.
3. 3. Environmental Protection Agency, “Demographics,” http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html.
4. 4. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2007.