The union of concerned scientists has defined industrial
agriculture as viewing the farm as a factory.
With input such as pesticides, feed, fertilizer and
fuel and outputs such as corn, chickens and so on.
The goal is to increase yield, measured by bushels per acre or
pounds of animal flesh for inputs of feed and decreased cost of production.
Usually by exploiting economies of scale and
externalizing costs to the environment.
By externalizing we mean not including in the retail cost of
a product the true cost of production.
So if there's great degradation of the environment, if you produce
an unhealthy diet that causes a lot of disease, and the consumers of that diet.
And those costs are borne by the healthcare system, or
by the public expenditures to deal with environmental degradation.
Those end up being externalized costs.