The practice cuts greenhouse-gas emissions only if you ignore the inconvenient fact that it requires a lot more land.
www.technologyreview.com
Probably not the right place for this, but factory farming is actually better for the environment than organic farming and in some cases better than free range farming when looking at cattle. With Chickens, because they take up a much smaller footprint it is better to free range them or use the Salatin model.
Factory farming on many levels is efficient than other methods of farming. Which is difficult to see when you look at pictures as the one with the cattle above.
We see the land over a relatively small area completely destroyed, but with the same amount of cattle you would need a lot more land to feed them if they were organic.
Each cow can up to 2-4% of their body weight a day which is about 20-40 pounds of feed (dry feed) for a 1,000 pound cow per day while consuming 30-50 gallons of water per day (which is like a bathtub)
If you have 1,000 cows then you should have at least 1,000 acres per cow for pasture as a rule of thumb for grazing.
Which takes up a lot more land than 1 acre factory farm with supplemental feed and water.
You also get the advantage of the cows with the supplemental feed getting better feed, which allows them to grow faster.
Factory farmed cows do not have to burn as much energy to put on weight, so they grow faster.
Like I said, factory farming is efficient.
Small Area, Nutrient rich feed, access to water, less overall energy per cow, and weight gain faster (shorter life of the cow).
The issue with western free range cattle is the cattle grow slower, have to eat more less notorious food, cover more land for the same amount of feed per day, find an adequate amount of water to drink, and have to escape predators which costs energy.
Now, I think the biggest argument against it is the treatment of animals. Which you could make a case.
There are a lot of weird things in terms of what is better for the environment even though on first glance there is no way that is the case.
Like paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic bags. Which is fun to point out when you go to Jackson where they believe they need to otherwise and feel the need to charge you at the grocery store for paper bags.