Cowspiracy Essay

Cowspiracy, a documentation about how factory farming is destroying the Earths natural
resources, was released in 2014. The position of the film is saying that the agricultural processes
the human population goes through is the main cause to global warming and how no one wants
to communicate the issue. How does the film progress to show this?
In the beginning, the documentary compares different problems (i.e. water consumption,
dangerous gases, pollution, etc.) with the products of agriculture. Throughout the film, there are
different interviews attended with people who either dont know the answer/dont know the issue
of agriculture, choose not to talk about it/avoid it or the few who are open to the topic and
willingly discuss it. The conclusion of the film brings up the topic about how this subject is like
walking on glass, its extremely dangerous. Its brought up multiple times about how people have
gotten hurt because they were trying to stop the increase in agriculture and minimize the amount
of agricultural facilities in the world. They also concluded that, by decreasing the number of
livestock we have as well as increasing the amount of grown food given to people, the effects
agriculture has on the environment will shrink and there will be more food for people.
Continuing off of that, the amount of food given to animals is enough to feed every
person on the planet. Why is the food were growing going to animals instead of human beings?
Simply because of the fact that there are around 700 billion livestock being raised by humans
alone. Raising animals to consume is the leading cause of air pollution and water consumption.
Why air pollution? When livestock release gas, they let out a gas known as methane. Methane is
10 times worse than carbon dioxide. So 700 billion farm animals releasing gas is going to be a
major problem. Every living organism needs water, livestock and crops are no different. 34
trillion gallons of water are used each year for agriculture alone. That number combined with the
7 billion people and countless other organisms living on this planet increases the risk of water
shortage. Another number to add onto this list is the fact that it take 660 gallons of water just to
make a lb. burger. Why do people need this much livestock?
Another thing the film does in order to get the audience to support their position, is how
they continuously show the interviews of people who wont answer any of the questions they had
about agriculture and how uncomfortable they felt. They also showed their filming studio stop
funding their project and people telling him to stop what the narrator is doing. The graphs are
always large and overshadow the others whenever they were compared. There also was a scene,
although it wasnt needed, about people slaughtering elephants because of a man who believed it
was elephants who were causing global warming. That scene would strike some emotion into the
audience, giving them more reason to support the creator of the documentary. However, there
were some problems with the film. As stated before, the narrator had mentioned about a burger
taking 660 gallons of water to make. But where did those numbers come from? Because there is
no mention of where he got this information, the measurements seem exaggerated and there is no
way of knowing of they were true or not.
Going back to the graphs, they were constantly brought up whenever one of the opposing
arguments were brought up. Whether they were during interviews or while searching online, bar

graphs were compared in order to prove them wrong. This was an effective argument tool
because it allowed the person to see the comparison and to have some reasoning as to whether or
not the narrator is correct. Another technique the movie had used was the choice of music and the
different camera angles. In the beginning, for example, the music that was playing was very
dramatic while they were in an interview with a member of an environmental group, when
suddenly, the music stopped when he had replied to the question. To go into more detail, this
specific scene was about the man being asked about how agriculture was affecting the
environment and that studies show that agriculture was the leading cause to environmental
decline. The man hesitated then simply said how he didnt understand the question. Another
technique used by the group would be, during interviews, how the camera zoomed in on people
being questioned. These moments were often with people who felt uncomfortable sharing their
knowledge about the agricultural issues or if they had blatantly said they werent going to answer
any questions like that. Quite suspicious.
My opinion on the topic is to agree with the narrator. Something needs to be done about
the agricultural industry, however, I can also see how the environmental groups would be
hesitant to discuss this topic. Its a touchy subject, people would lose their farms and some would
probably think they were being asked to become completely vegan. But this should be the least
of the publics fears. With the way things are going, giving up animal products as well as farm
land is a lot better than giving up an entire planet. People do not need 700 billion livestock for 7
billion people. A single person will not eat 100 billion animals in their lifetime. The water
consumption would also lower exponentially and environments would be able to come back.
Those large numbers that always seem to be fighting against our goal would recede and allow us
a fighting chance to fix our mistakes.
Before this film, I knew there were human problems we needed to fix. I never imagined
that something like livestock would cause such massive dilemmas to our planet. Once the issues
with agriculture are solved, the act on repairing this planet can flourish with a new-found haste.