Extensive and intensive livestock farming: What are their differences?

Since the Neolithic, livestock farming has accompanied human beings in their progress. But the increase in the consumption of animal protein in an ever-growing human population (the quote is from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, in its report ‘World Agriculture: towards 2015/2030’) has caused the breeding of animals for their meat, milk, leather, and other products to adapt to economic and social circumstances, crystallizing in a double trend: on the one hand, an extensive production that we could qualify as more traditional, which relies on natural pastures and meadows, and, on the other, a growing process of industrialization, intensive, adapted to mass consumption. Differences between extensive and intensive livestock farming The type of feed for the animals is one of the main differences between extensive and intensive livestock farming. The former takes advantage of the territory's own resources through grazing. The latter depends on food ...