The Pros and Cons of Animal Husbandry

Article by Animal-Husbandry

There are two ways of arguing about the pros and cons of animal husbandry. One believes that animal husbandry has paved the way to incredible development in the economy and civilization of human history. The other side argues that had human not chosen to settle down for sedentary life, human would not have brought mankind to as close to the point of extinction as it is now.

While each side has their own extremities, in this article, we will take a look at both sides of the opinions to gain a better understanding of the pros and cons of animal husbandry.

Pro-side believes animal husbandry is the reason behind the vast development we have today in our economy and civilization. Animal husbandry gave way to huge technological developments that help us to modify and overcome the limitations of the natural environment. Thanks to such inventions, we now know about and practice specialized food crop cultivation, irrigation and food storage technologies. We gain higher productivity through our animal domestication. As a result, we now have surplus food production to support us through natural disasters when food is hard to be hunted or gathered from the environment. Since the time of animal husbandry when human settled down instead of wandering about, labor has been diversified and specified in a much more complex manner. Productivity was hugely increased. With the food surplus, trading was developed, allowing men to have their desired variety of food in their home.

With fewer worries on food and less time to be dedicated to travelling around and finding food, men had more time to develop advanced economies and civilizations. Nowadays, with practice of animal husbandry still ever popular and developing, we live in a highly convenient age where technologies are booming and information offers us ample opportunities to a better life. It would be hard to imagine a different world now without the invention of animal husbandry thousands of years ago.

On the other hand, the other side of the extremes argues that it was because of the introduction of animal husbandry that mankind is getting so close to the point of extinction for the time being. Problems are exploding everywhere, with environmental pollution, lack of future food supply due to exponential population growth, and the expansion of deathly diseases being some of the problems to be named. Men gave up their nomadic life, settled down their life in one location and modified nature. While they modify nature with a view to gaining more food in the short term, they also destroy nature, which in the long term would cease to protect them and offer them the food they need. Environmental problems are overwhelming now everywhere all over the world. Global temperature is rising. Water is being polluted. Children are dying of smoke in the air and chemical in the land transferring to food products.

It has also been calculated that because world population is growing so fast, it is soon coming to a point when food production, however effective it may be, could no longer provide sufficiently to the need of the people. At the same time, because men decided to domesticate animals, animals are now transferring to human beings incurable diseases never known before to us. Mad cow, bird flu, swine influenza are just a few to be named that are killing humans.

With both sides of pros and cons giving compelling evidence to support their arguments, it takes careful analysis to decide which side we support. However, it is noteworthy that the move of the human beings towards animal husbandry marked a significant revolution in our history, the impact of which yet to be given a thorough conclusion.