<
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/29/climate/factory-farming-transfarmation-project.html>
"A few years ago, Tyler Whitley was working at a help line for farmers in
financial distress when a call came from a man who was raising poultry.
The caller said he worked round the clock rearing hundreds of thousands of
chickens at his factory farm each year, yet had trouble affording a Walmart
sheet cake for his daughter’s birthday. The man scraped together enough for the
cake, but couldn’t cover the barns’ heating bill. The poultry company the
farmer was contracted with berated him for spending money on a cake rather than
the outstanding bill, Mr. Whitley recalled.
“This from a representative of a company that makes billions of dollars,” Mr.
Whitley said. “I came to view factory farming as a cancer on rural America,” he
continued. “I hated how it robbed people of their humanity and reduced them
down to a number, to a widget, to a cog.”
Virtually all of the meat consumed in America comes from industrialized farms.
Proponents say it keeps meat affordable.
But along with taking a heavy toll on animals, there is an environmental price.
Factory farms generate greenhouse gasses and other pollution, and require vast
amounts of freshwater. To combat global warming, the United Nations has urged
people to consume less meat.
There is a human cost, too. The work is physically grueling and many farmers
earn incomes below the poverty line. The median net revenue for poultry farmers
in 2022 was $9,367, according to the Department of Agriculture, and many
farmers owe significant debt on their farm buildings.
Today Mr. Whitley is director of the Transfarmation Project, an initiative of
the charity Mercy for Animals that works to help people find a path out of
factory farming. The group is working with a dozen farms, including one run by
the Faaborgs, an Iowa family that traded raising hogs for growing mushrooms and
was profiled this month in
The Times. “I’ve never heard of a farmer who’s
regretted their choice to get out,” Mr. Whitley said. “The longer that they’re
out, the happier they are.”
Here are excerpts from recent interviews with Mr. Whitley, edited and condensed
for clarity."
Via David Byrne at
Raasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-bikepacking-zero-emissions/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
