Industrial agriculture is form of modern agriculture that refers to the industrialized production of poultry, livestock, fish, and crops. It is capital-intensive, substituting machinery and the purchased inputs for human and animal labor. The methods of industrial agriculture are techno-scientific, economic and political.
They include the creation in agriculture machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade.
The industrial agriculture sees the farm as a factory with “inputs” such as pesticides, feed, fertilizer and fuel; and “outputs” corn, chickens, and so on. The main aim of industrial agriculture is increase yield and to reduce costs of production. The methods of industrial agriculture are used in producing meat, dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables available in supermarkets.
Industrial agriculture mostly depends on the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, large amounts of irrigation water, major transportation systems, factory-style practices for increasing livestock, and machine technology. The features of industrial agriculture include monoculture, few crop varieties, use of chemical and other inputs, and the separation of animal and plant agriculture.
Research and extension, subsidies and marketing are the policies that support the industrial agriculture. The benefits of industrial approach are well known – cheap feed for animal factory farms, a potential energy source to replace the foreign oil, profitable large agriculture operations, and substantial exports to foreign markets. Industrial animal and crop agriculture has been developed with a narrow focus on increased production. The fantastic increase in the productivity of staple crops helps in keeping the food prices relatively low.
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