As the demand for better farmed animal welfare grows, the focus is often on what consumers value. However, farmers tend to view animal welfare differently from the general public, bringing unique and practical insights to the table. This paper looks at the issue from the farmers’ perspective, exploring the challenges they face and what they can do to address them and safeguard animal welfare.

Farmers’ Challenges

Taking a global view, the author highlights a number of ongoing, emerging, and interrelated challenges that threaten farmers’ ability to provide good animal welfare.

Climate change intensifies heat stress, reduces feed and water quality, and disrupts farmed animal reproduction and productivity. Extreme weather and rising temperatures increase disease spread and transport mortality, and make planning difficult for farmers.

Climate change also contributes to feed shortages due to drought and disease. These especially hurt smallholders who don’t have the resources to save crops or seed stocks. The author predicts that feed shortages will be compounded by increased demand for cereal grains from a growing human population, which reduces their availability for farmed animals.

With climate change making farming more unpredictable, rising costs and market volatility make it riskier for farmers — especially smallholders — to invest in better facilities for animal welfare. High feed and fertilizer costs impact feed availability, which puts animal health and welfare at risk, particularly for breeds selectively bred for high production.

These selective breeding efforts have reduced biodiversity. This has left high-yield breeds vulnerable, while traditional, disease-resistant breeds are increasingly needed for less intensive farming.

At the same time, ongoing migration to cities and more industrialized countries has resulted in shortages of skilled labor. This has impacted farmers’ ability to detect animal health issues, particularly in industrial systems where staff have limited time to observe large numbers of animals.

Diseases like African swine fever and avian influenza pose severe welfare risks, and antibiotic use is expected to rise as intensive systems spread in many developing countries. As these systems rely on antibiotics to improve digestion efficiency in addition to disease prevention, the threat of antibiotic resistance remains.

Finally, although farmers are usually not directly involved, transport continues to be rife with welfare challenges, including overcrowding, inadequate feed and water, and highly stressful conditions. A worldwide reduction in the number of slaughter facilities means that farmed animals have to travel further. These long-distance journeys increase the risk of aggression, injuries, and disease transmission.

Farmers’ Options

The author also discusses possible solutions to these challenges for farmers, including:

• Improved nutrition: Natural, lower-energy diets can help reduce heat stress and metabolic diseases. Feed additives like flavonoids, green tea, and prebiotics can replace antibiotics and boost health, though scalability and dosing remain challenges.
• Diversification: Shifting from animal farming to crop production or alternative protein markets can mitigate risks from rising feed costs and environmental pressures.
• Silvopastoral systems: Integrating trees and crops with farmed animal production can improve water use, soil fertility, and animal welfare, while reducing stocking density and disease risks.
• Reversing genetic gains: Reverting to traditional, slower-growing farmed animal breeds can reduce production-related diseases like lameness and mastitis.
• Precision livestock farming: Artificial intelligence and other technologies have the potential to improve welfare monitoring through innovations like drones and bioacoustic analysis, enabling farmers to detect stress, social disruptions, or hazards remotely. While promising, adoption is limited by high costs, trust issues, and diverse farm conditions.

For advocates working to improve farmed animal welfare, this article outlines the significant challenges farmers are facing that threaten their ability to make long-term investments and maintain good animal welfare. These pressures may discourage welfare-improving investments and push some farmers toward alternative ventures. While there are strategies to mitigate these risks, not all farmers will avoid difficulties, which could lead to compromised animal welfare.