Factory Farming

For my position paper topic, I'm planning to write on the negative effects of factory farming. Not only is the treatment of animals and the conditions they are kept in on such farms inhumane and appalling, it is destructive to the air, soil, and water surrounding them. The farms consist of a large amount of livestock crammed into a small area of land, with no pasture or grazing land. On traditional farms, the waste produced by the animals was recycled into the earth spread over the crops land for the following year, but on factory farms, where the animals can produce trillions of pounds of waste every year, the manure and urine is stored in open containers. Runoff from it into streams, rivers, and lakes can kill fish and contaminate human drinking water. As well, the air pollution caused by these farms is a hazard to air quality.
The main argument in favor of factory farming is that it is economical to produce the amount of meat the public demands at a lower price. However, for food production, in terms of feeding a larger amount of people, it would be more economical and environmentally safe to, instead of feeding all this livestock to produce meat, use the grain that would have fed the animals to feed humans. On average, the grain production that goes into feeding livestock would feed sixteen times more people than the meat produced by the animal feeds.
I have other supporting arguments as well, but this is a start. I think it would be a good topic for me to address because it coincides with what we are studying in my Environmental Science class as well.