ABSTRACT
Agriculture dominates Australia's land use, while livestock landscapes unequivocally dominate the nation's agriculture. Australia's livestock industry is tricephalic, comprising three main practices: (1) intensive factory farming, (2) grazing animals and feed production on modified pastures and (3) grazing animals on predominantly native pastures. Factory farms and fields are decreasingly ‘either-or’ practices but interconnected components in the country's complex livestock production systems. Intensification in livestock production is a continuing trend and subsequently, a growing proportion of Australia's grain production is diverted to animal feed. Another phenomenon is the increasing separation between Australia's highly urbanised population and agri-production environments, especially fully fledged industrial operations commonly concealed from the public gaze. Yet the national agri-food industry continues to broadcast a bucolic image, while claiming and stating its desire to be Australia's most trusted industry. This chapter challenges livestock industry claims and seeks to improve its perceptibility through digitally bridging the milieus of production—the rural—and consumption—the urban. Data synthesis of Australia's livestock industry is transmuted into 12 urban spatial and volumetric graphic expressions, intended to aid the conceptualisation of the current state of food systems and landscapes.
