Life After Factory Farming: ‘The Longer They’re Out, the Happier They Are.’

A few years ago, Tyler Whitley was working at a helpline 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, Whitley recalled.

“This from a representative of a company that makes billions of dollars,” Whitley said, adding: “I came to view factory farming as a cancer on rural America. 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 gases 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, 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 New York Times. “I’ve never heard of a farmer who’s regretted their choice to get out,” Whitley said. “The longer that they’re out, the happier they are.”

Here are excerpts from recent interviews with Whitley, edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: You’ve worked extensively with factory farmers in financial distress. What stands out from their experiences?

A: I would hear stories of farmers having to leave church midservice, leaving their daughter’s or son’s softball game midgame. Not having a vacation in 20 years. Only leaving the farm to attend a funeral. They never traveled too far from the farm, knowing that 30 minutes without water, 30 minutes without air circulation or high temperatures can be a life-or-death situation for an animal like the chicken. They didn’t want all the animals to die. They’d lose their entire paycheck.

Q: Is poor pay the major reason people want to leave factory farming?

A: It’s never one issue. It’s the economic issue. The quality of life. It’s physically very hard. It’s the environmental impact of their operations. Often, they don’t like the way that the animals are treated. They’ll talk about how they hate the smell and the flies. They’ll hate what factory farming has done to their community. Plus, none of the next generation wants to go through that. The ones that have very, very positive experiences are, in my experience, certainly in the minority.

Q: Agribusinesses say that they’re helping rural communities and families, and providing an efficient way to supply food for a growing population at low cost to consumers.

A: If you’re looking at just what’s paid at the cash register versus how much government dollars are subsidized into this industry, the environmental impact, the impact to local businesses, it’s an extremely costly business that does not equal out to the benefits that it purports. Plus, nobody wants to build new houses next to a chicken farm or a rendering plant or a processing plant. Competing businesses don’t want to be adjacent to something that smells that way, that pollutes the environment. So, these communities become entirely dependent upon these industries.

Q: What is the incentive for getting into industrial livestock?

A: At least 20% of poultry farmers live below the poverty line, even though they’ve invested millions of dollars to build the facilities, and another 20% earn more than $100,000 a year from it. It’s presented as an opportunity to farmers to earn on average $50,000 a year — that the harder you work, the better you perform. But the industry can’t guarantee that. The company uses an incentive method known as the tournament system. The top performers are paid more, and that bonus is taken from the lower performers’ paychecks.

Q: What can consumers do?

A: You can vote with your dollar. You can support elected officials that fight for a better food system. You can choose to consume more plant-based options, more fresh fruits and vegetables, and buy from local farmers. Even in highly urbanized areas that largely are food deserts, you can find those things. You really need to just be a more mindful consumer. Lentils and beans are great ways to ensure that you’re getting adequate protein at a very, very low cost.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .