Life in the countryside today

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Animal farming is just about the only reliable source of income for people who live in the countryside. They use the ‘resources at hand’. They farm animals, sometimes because the profits are better than from growing crops and sometimes because the land can only support animal grazing. The more marginal the land the more cattle or sheep will be ‘run’ on it.
Converting the land’s energy is the name of the game. When the primary ‘converter’ is an animal it is regarded merely as a machine for ‘making good use of the land’. The fact that a ‘farm’ animal is a sentient being with individual needs like any other animal seems to be ignored by the human exploiter, who tailor’s the animals’ lives to suit human convenience.
The cruelty factor has exponentially increased over the past 60 years owing to ever fiercer competition for market share and the vast explosion of (hungry) populations in urban concentrations that have stimulated it. The threat of competition has made intensive farming inevitable. For example, a chicken farmer who might have had hens pecking around the farm yard now has to do unspeakable things to thousands of hens, caging them in sheds under artificial lighting, or he’ll go out of business.
The countryside, the land, the peace and beauty of it, Nature itself, has become a location for indoor factories housing animals which are being kept like factory machinery for mass production of meat, milk, eggs and skin. That’s the only way today that people who live in the country can earn a living and stay on their farms. If they refuse to intensify their operations then, short of moving to the city to find scarce work, they will go out of business and face financial ruin. There are many rural suicides connected with farms going bust.
Like many other highly destructive pursuits, like deforesting by foresters or denuding the land by miners, animal farmers have to destroy the beauty of the countryside they love, just to stay alive. We the consumer can’t mine copper or cut down timber or make food. We’re dependent on these primary producers. We feel we have to support those people who can bring us the products we want, to maintain our rich-living lifestyles.
If we decide NOT to support exploitative industries it means we’ll have to forgo many items ‘needed’ by us ... and without them we believe we’ll go mad.