The latest cover story in TIME magazine is just the latest attack on large farms involved in production agriculture. The “lightning rod” in these attacks seems to always be the CAFO or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. These are farms with 1,000 or more animal units but an “animal unit” varies by species. For instance, a cattle CAFO is 1,000 cattle, for hogs it is 2,500 hogs weighing at least 55 pounds and in dairy it is 700 cows.
Using those parameters and the most recent data from the Ag Census and the National Ag Statistics Service, one can get a rough estimate how much of the nation’s food supply comes from CAFOs. At the end of 2007 there were 10,810 CAFO cattle operations, 2,326 CAFO dairy operations and 6,381 CAFO hog farms.
If we were to stop production immediately on all beef, hog and dairy CAFOs, it would eliminate 34 percent of the nation’s beef supply, 54 percent of our milk production and at least 65 percent of all pork.
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