TL;DR
Recently, an argument has circulated claiming that factory farming is net positive because of the effects on soil animals. While I do not personally agree with this argument, I believe nematodes and other soil animals are worth caring about and respect the spirit with which it has been presented. However, I argue that if you truly believe that soil animal welfare is our top priority, arguing in favor of factory farming is not the most efficient way to pursue soil animal welfare, and there are much better, ethically safer levers for change.
Background
If you have browsed the comments under almost any animal welfare related EA Forum post recently, you have likely seen claims that the effect of ending factory farming would actually be net negative because of what I will call The Nematode Argument:
- Factory farmed animals are outnumbered by springtails and soil nematodes by several orders of magnitude,
- There is at least a small chance that these animals are sentient to some degree,
- These animals are slightly more likely than not to live net negative lives, and
- Ending factory farming would cause more of these animals to come into existence.
- Thus, the total suffering caused by ending factory farming would be greater than letting it continue.
The Nematode Argument is not without critique. In fact, it seems that the vast majority of people on the EA Forum (including myself) do not believe its conclusion. Some disagree that wild animals are likely to live negative lives, some disagree that such suffering could outweigh the suffering of factory farming, and some believe that we are simply too uncertain about the lives of wild animals to justify continuing factory farming.[1] I am strongly sympathetic to all of these arguments, but I did not make this post to argue them. I restate them here primarily to highlight that there are many good reasons not to accept the conclusion of this argument.
It’s Worth Caring About Nematodes
Because I have started this post highlighting the flaws of The Nematode Argument, you might assume that I don’t care about wild animal welfare or am opposed to controversial arguments. Neither are true. I believe that wild animals, including nematodes, are worth significant moral consideration. I call myself Nematode Lover not ironically but out of genuine regard for an underrepresented species.[2] Furthermore, I would describe myself as particularly open to arguments like this, even within EA spaces.
So while I do not agree with the conclusions of the few who push The Nematode Argument, I do believe that considering The Nematode Argument is worthwhile, and if I believed it, I would hold myself to the standard of its conclusion. If you personally believe in The Nematode Argument, please keep in mind where I am coming from as you continue on to the next section.
If You Care About Nematodes…
Suppose that you believe all of the following statements, which are cruxes for The Nematode Argument.
- Springtails and soil nematodes are so numerous such that if they suffer, their suffering is vastly more important than that of humans or farmed animals.
- There is at least a small chance that these animals are sentient to some degree.
- These animals are slightly more likely than not to live net negative lives.
- Our confidence in statements 1, 2, and 3 is high enough such that we should take action to reduce the number of springtails and soil nematodes.
If we assume these 4 statements to be true,[3] then the question becomes: What is the best way to reduce soil animal populations?
While we could pursue this through increasing factory farming, that is an arbitrary target. Just because we started to consider these soil animals because of evaluations of the impact of factory farming does not mean that factory farming is the best way to reduce soil animal populations. This doesn’t even address the massive amount of cruelty required to continue factory farming which would not be required with other approaches.
I would argue that, assuming you believe that reducing soil animal populations is your top moral priority, you should work in the Real Estate Development sector. (Note that the Real Estate Development sector is one arbitrary choice of many potential options that are likely to be better than arguing in favor of factory farming. I chose one specific sector for illustrative purposes.)
This has a few advantages relative to arguing in favor of factory farming.
- Counterfactually increasing development (particularly if it is done in regions currently facing a housing crisis) has large beneficial impacts for human wellbeing.
- Your effects on farmed animals will be approximately zero, as opposed to actively advocating for their continued torture.
Most importantly for those who believe The Nematode Argument, I expect you will be able to reduce soil animal populations significantly more. According to The Nematode Argument, factory farming affects nematodes through transforming grassland regions. It seems highly plausible that you could counterfactually affect many more acres of this land (and thus many more soil animals) through building houses or other structures than trying to maintain factory farms.[4]
As a result, working in Real Estate Development seems likely to be better for humans, farmed animals, and wild animals relative to arguing in favor of factory farming.
As a quick caveat, I have not researched this specific pathway in depth. Rather, Real Estate Development is just one of the top options recommended by ChatGPT 5.1. Normally, I would not include something like this in a post, as I do not believe that a result pulled straight from an LLM with minimal scrutiny should be used to make important decisions like this. However, Real Estate Development is merely one sample career path that I am not trying to rigorously defend. I believe the burden of investigation is on those who believe in The Nematode Argument to find the best career pathway to support soil animals.
More importantly, I do believe the underlying claim: It seems highly unlikely that arguing in favor of factory farming is the best use of your time, even if you believe that reducing soil nematodes is our top moral priority.
As a result, we are all in one of two situations. If we don’t believe The Nematode Argument, we shouldn’t argue in favor of factory farming because doing so is morally wrong. If we do believe The Nematode Argument, we shouldn’t argue in favor of factory farming because we have better things to focus on.
If you truly believe in The Nematode Argument, I believe your best option is to explore which careers are best for reducing soil animal populations and take action (so long as there is no good reason to believe your career might be particularly harmful to humans or non-human animals).
And please, from someone who truly does care about nematodes, stop derailing discussions of farmed animal welfare.
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There are also other reasonable counter arguments which I do not include here for brevity.
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As a humorous side note, nematodelover@gmail.com was already taken when I tried to create it. If you would like to contact me about this piece privately, you can reach me at ilovenematodes@gmail.com, which was available.
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Which I personally disagree with strongly, but am considering for the sake of argument.
- ^
For the sake of completeness, I will say that I object to and do not endorse the harms of habitat destruction. I am only willing to accept this premise for the sake of argument because I am more strongly opposed to arguing in favor of factory farms, which entails the same types of habitat destruction while also torturing farmed animals in the process.
Agriculture is somewhat unique in its use of enormous amounts of land. But even within that context, there are many other pathways if someone is truly convinced that expanding land use is somehow a positive for the world.
The most obvious example is biofuel. The climate space has explored it extensively. It demands huge amounts of land and would result in substantial additional deforestation.
Beyond that, there may be ways to accelerate soil degradation. Opposing regenerative agriculture would probably help. There are also avenues to promote soil acidification, such as encouraging the use of certain fertilizers.
It’s also lazy to lump all cropland together. Different crops require different soil conditions and different uses of fertilizers, insecticides, and fungicides, all of which likely influence soil animal populations in different ways.
The effects of global warming — such as land becoming submerged — would also shift populations of soil animals. I’m sure there are differing levels of nematodes, springtails, and sea monkey populations on land versus underwater. And simply changing global temperatures would almost certainly affect these populations as well.
If one genuinely cares about microscopic animals and believes they understand their welfare enough to link it directly to land use, there’s plenty to examine. It probably reveals some unconventional interventions to explore.
Given that none of these areas seem to be getting much serious attention, it feels quite absurd to use nematodes as an argument against farmed animal work — especially when factory farming is responsible for some of the most severe, well-documented suffering we know of.
You're getting at the heart of my argument here. Even if we assume that expanding land use is not just positive but a central moral target, it is still highly implausible that the best way to use land requires us to also torture animals on that land. I agree that it is absurd to converge on factory farming as the best answer, especially when even "all of the work involved in land development in factory farming but nothing else" would be cheaper.
I would like to see those who hold the view of land use as a central moral target (such as @Vasco Grilo🔸) to explore what the best pathway is. And I don't think it is remotely justifiable to derail discussions of farmed animal welfare work with nematode arguments until there is a robust case not just for its effect on nematode welfare, but against any other plausible way to increase land use.
I recommend research on the welfare of soil animals in different biomes over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively look the most cost-effective.
I have not argued for factory-farming being the most cost-effective way of increasing agricultural land. From my last post looking into the impact of animal farming on soil animals, "I am arguing for, by increasing cost-effectiveness, changes in food consumption which increase agricultural land [I no longer do], the most cost-effective global health interventions [I no longer do], and targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives [I still do]".
The cost-effectiveness of advocating for an intervention is the product between the cost-effectiveness of funding it (raw cost-effectiveness) times the money moved to it as a fraction of the money spent advocating for it (fundraising multiplier). I agree there are ways of increasing agricultural land with a much higher raw cost-effectiveness than buying beef. However, their fundraising multiplier may often be low enough for it not to be worth advocating for them.
This would not necessarily undermine your overall argument but, interestingly, Tomasik's (2016-2022) estimates seem somewhat in tension with this claim. According to him, it's really hard to beat "buying beef" in terms of cost-effectiveness to reduce wild invertebrate populations.[1] (Not saying I agree or that I think we should reduce wild invertebrate populations.)
Although he omits the fact that agriculture might in fact increase soil nematode populations, as also pointed out by Vasco in another comment thread here.
Thanks, Jim. I forgot to comment on that. When I read the post, I immediately thought there is no way building houses increases paved area more cost-effectively than buying beef increases agricultural land. I estimate that buying beef increases agricultural land by 51.6 m²-year/$, which means 1.94 $ (= 100/51.6) of beef would increase it by 100 m²-year. So a building whose base was a square with 10 m (= 100^0.5) of side, and whose construction was accelerated by 10 years would have to cost 19.4 $ (= 1.94*10) for it to increase paved area as cost-effectively as buying beef increases agricultural land. Of course, such a building would be way more costly. Here is another check. It looks like the construction cost in Portugal is 2.7 k€/m², 3.11 k$/m² (= 2.7*10^3/0.868), and I think this accounts for the area across all floors. For 3 floors (0, 1, and 2), the cost based on the paved area would be 9.33 k$/m² (= 3.11*10^3*3), or 1.07*10^-4 m²/$ (= 1/(9.33*10^3)). Assuming the intervention accelerated the construction by 10 years, it would increase paved area by 0.00107 m²-year/$ (= 1.07*10^-4*10), 0.00207 % (= 0.00107/51.6) as much as I estimate buying beef increases agricultural land. I am somewhat surprised ChatGPT 5.1 got it so wrong in thinking that building houses could be a great way to change land use.
Hi Vasco,
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my post here and elsewhere. I am personally not surprised at all that GPT 5.1 got this type of thing wrong. Like I said in the post, I don't believe LLMs should be trusted on complicated and important questions like these, and I only used GPT because Real Estate Development was a somewhat arbitrary example, not a specific call for focus.[1] My real CTA with this post is for people who believe nematodes (and other soil animals) are our primary concern to investigate other interventions that don't concern factory farming. YGG's comment captures it well.
There could be some interesting discussion about the difference between buying beef and spending money developing land in a way that could turn a profit allowing you to earn to give, meaning a straight cost-effectiveness comparison doesn't really make sense.
However, I really don't really know if Real Estate Development specifically is a better or worse use of your time. Again, it was an arbitrary example.
Why do you think Open Phil funded housing policy reform?
In my last post about the effects of farming on soil animals, I assumed increasing agricultural land decreases soil-animal-years, which means replacing plant- with animal-based foods would decrease soil-animal-years. However, I am now more uncertain about whether increasing agricultural land increases or decreases soil-animal-years. My best guess is that it tends to decrease soil-arthropod-years, but increase soil-nematode-years. I recommend research on the welfare of soil animals in different biomes over pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively look the most cost-effective. This is in agreement with my top recommendation in my last post about the effects of farming on soil animals. "I am arguing for, by increasing cost-effectiveness, changes in food consumption which increase agricultural land [I no longer do], the most cost-effective global health interventions [I no longer do], and targeted research on whether soil animals have positive or negative lives [I still do]".
Given your final statement in this comment, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on my ending call to action:
Dominant very uncertain effects on soil animaks make me think it very unclear whether interventions targeting farmed animals increase or decrease animal welfare in expectation relative to burning money. If organisation targeting farmed animals were burning money, I would want to discuss this. Likewise, I believe it makes sense to discuss effects on soil animals. I understand being agnostic about whether funding interventions targeting farmed animals is better or worse than burning money, due to effects on soil animals, is contentious. However, conditional on you having that view, would you find it reasonable to discuss effects on soil animals?
I am completely unopposed to discussing soil animals and the extent to which our actions affect their welfare. I actually think that doing so is valuable. My EA Forum post explicitly highlights that there is more exploration to be done in this regard that I want to see done.
I take zero issue with the fact that you have authored multiple EA Forum posts about this topic. While I fundamentally disagree with your assumptions/methodology/conclusions, from a position of epistemic modesty, I think it is good that people with wildly differing views can share such ideas in this forum. If you could find interventions that improve the welfare of soil nematodes significantly that are well-evidenced and robust to many moral frameworks, I would be really happy to see it.
However, there is a distinction between discussing soil animals and derailing otherwise productive conversations. Continuing to reply to what feels like every single animal welfare post with a comment about nematodes even when the connection is tenuous, despite multiple people trying to communicate why you should stop, is not just bothersome to many within the community. It also has negative long-term implications, since you are alienating EA animal welfare advocates, one of the groups I expect to be most open to your beliefs regarding nematodes.
Thanks for the post!
I think the effects on soil animals of food production would still be much larger than those on farmed animals even if the total welfare of soil springtails, mites, and nematodes was exactly 0. I calculate soil ants and termites have 2.91 and 1.16 times as many neurons as shrimp, and "number of neurons"^0.188 explains quite well the welfare ranges in Bob Fischer's book about comparing welfare across species, which suggests the welfare range of soil ants and termites is similar to that of shrimps. For individual welfare per animal-year proportional to "number of neurons"^0.5 (my preferred way of comparing welfare across species), I estimate that producing chicken meat changes the welfare of soil ants and termites 218 times as much as it decreases the welfare of chickens, and that producing farmed fish changes the welfare of soil ants and termites 247 times as much as it decrease the welfare of fish. For an exponent of the number of neurons of 0.19 (which explains quite well the welfare ranges in Bob's book), I get ratios of 3.11 k and 1.35 k.