The following quotes, facts, figures and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources.  Our choices do matter:  What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."

---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation

One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year.  The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person.  This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States. 

A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day.  This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.

A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year.  Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.

One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total.  One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.  Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution.  This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming.  Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect.  The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then.  By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."

---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York

Agricultural meat production generates air pollution.  As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health.  Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain.  Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia.  Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.

The World Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted.  Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic. 

The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture.  While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it.  It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.

Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union.  That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals.  By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom.  Meat production consumes the world's land resources.

Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock.  Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock.  The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs:  five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.

33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter.  In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."

---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef:  The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.

We need to save the family farm, eliminate the factory farms and large scale agriculture.

While a real catchy slogan, No Farms NO Food,  doesn't really identify the real problem. Without farmers or ranchers you can have all the farm land in the world and you are going to starve.

I'm not sure if this is the exact figure but I believe less than 4% of the farmers in the US today are under 35. If you subtract out the part time folk, if farmers or ranchers were animals they would be at the top of the endangered species list.
At my county's recent Farm Bureau Banquet the young people were in their 50's. My guess,  half the  people attending were over 70. The County Farm Bureau Queen is a smart young woman who grew up on a beef operation  and is using her scholarship money to study to be a  nurse. She and her brother were the only people in the room under 35.

The County and State, where I farm, Baltimore County & Maryland are up there in the forefront of preserving agriculture.  If you are not inheriting the land, you are looking at $1 million dollars or so to purchase  a 50 to 100 acre farm. Next there are the operating costs. If you calculate in the current expected return on investment studying to be a nurse is a wise decision,  if you are motivated by a decent standard of living or being able to pay your bills.  What young person under 35 would want to pursue a career choice where in all probability they will be bankrupt by 35.

Rather than enacting more laws protecting farmland, I believe solutions that make farming a viable economic choice would  do  more to preserve farmland and farmers.  If over lets say 10 years, my return would be greater than selling out to a developer, a rational  person would not sell or someone who was willing to pay to keep farming the land would buy it. But under current economic conditions growing townhouses is the only choice since the other choice would be to let the land lie fallow. Remember there are not enough farmers to replace the ones being lost or people wanting to farm willing to match what a developer would pay. The recent real estate crash actually has probably done more to preserve farmland from development than all the current laws that have been enacted.

Over time however unless something is done to make farming viable, the free market  forces will return. The solution to me is what can be done to make farming viable. Greed will as it has in the past motivate people to circumvent the rules to convert protect farmland into houses. This is typically a permanent change.

Next I find the paragraph containing ...  " protecting the land base that all kinds of agriculture (no matter what your definition of "sustainable" is) depends on." rather interesting.

Protecting the land base to me,  also mean protecting the lands ability to nurture a crop now and in the future. What good is preserving land for farming if it can't grow anything. In the 4th century BC, Heroditus described the part of North Africa today known as Libya,  as a land of milk and honey, crystal clear springs and lush meadows/pastures of alfalfa. Due to the agricultural methods pursued then, today it is desert. So if the goal was to create plenty of beach front property those ancient were very successful. If however their goal was to preserve land for farming, they were remarkable failures. When you think about it, the 2400 years that have passed, since Heroditus and Pliny described this area, are in  the expanse of time, the earth has supported humans and agriculture,  not much more than  blink of an eye in your lifetime. Just preserving land for agriculture is not enough, as there are numerous examples of civilizations due to poor agricultural policy destroying themselves. What must be done is preserving the land in a form where  it will be productive for growing.

To sum up farming must be made viable and land preservation must enhance the soil and environment.

Consider the fact that the largest housing subsidy the government gives out is the interest dedcution on mortgage payments. This encouraged homeownership, which increased the demand for houses, which resulting in plowing up farm fields for new ones.

What economic incentives do farmers get?