Compassion in World Farming USA has been working on this since at least 2014. You may want to listen to this interview with Leah Garces, former Executive Director. Start listening at 18:20.
Thanks, I am glad hear that they are working on that. It does sound a bit different than what I had in mind in that(judging only from the podcast you linked to) they are much more focused on welfare issues rather than economic ones. This surely has benefits that focusing on economics doesn’t, but I wonder if in a separate project/film, they could reach a wider audience by making a mostly economic case
In the podcast, Leah makes the case the economic case for farmers starting at 39:00. Farmers aren’t going to be listen to Our Hen House, but presumably Compassion in World Farming USA is making arguments appropriate for each audience.
Also, this very popular clip with John Oliver is heavily focused on the bad economics of chicken contract farming for the farmers. This was likely influenced by Compassion in World Farming USA’s work.
Thanks for this. I’d love to hear more if you could elaborate on some of your sections, such as the opportunities for farmers now or the analogy to how similar strategies fit into anti-tobacco lobbying.
I don’t have great answers to alternatives, but dairy farms can be turned I to beer breweries or plant-based milk facilities, chicken farms can be turned to mushroom growing facilities, most farms can grow crops that are not typically used for feed, but which ones depend on the region. A small number of farms in certain locations can support touristy businesses like pick-your-own-apples and go-on-a-hayride but that is not scalable. I’m looking into pig farms but I’m not sure about how they might be repurposed.
More and more jobs offer remote work, and while this won’t work for most farmers, I suspect a lot of (particularly young) would-be farmers underestimate the number of options.
I’m still thinking and will post if I come up with other ideas.
As for the anti-tobbacco lobbying goes, there was a group that was prominent in the anti-tobbacco movement that would go farm to farm educating farmers about crops that could be grown on the same land (peanuts and cotton as well as some corn and soy). Those crops were more mechanized than tobacco, so they would tell the farmers about how to get started. They framed it as “the tobbacco industry is not long for this world and we want to help you out.” As far as I know (I’m hearing this all second and third hand, so I can’t be sure) there was no insinuating that the growers were doing anything wrong.
If you remember it, what was the name of this anti-tobacco group? In a quick search, I found a few articles about tobacco farmers who decided to switch to new crops for various reasons, but nothing about a nonprofit trying to make switches happen.
John Oliver (the comedian) did this piece on chicken farming. It’s the best attempt I know of to broadcast how terrible chicken farming is to the public, and completely stays away from animal welfare issues.
To what extent do you think the average farmer is likely to be replaced if they choose not to enter the industry?
Given the smallish number of large-scale American agribusinesses, I wouldn’t be surprised if convincing someone not to farm actually does reduce the number of farmers in the long term, but I’d expect it to have a smaller effect on reducing the number of farmed chickens. Though I know nothing about agriculture as an industry, I’d naively expect a drop in farmers to lead to higher chicken prices, which would then lead existing businesses to expand their operations.
Does anyone know more about the economics at work here? Maybe land-use laws make it difficult to expand existing businesses and easier for a new farmer to get started in a new location?
I think the economics are definitely worth worrying about, but I also think they work out. There are a small number of large firms that contract out to farmers(eg Tyson’s), but a large number of contract farmers. Farmers tend to stop producing more chickens at a point where the marginal cost of an additional chicken are increasing. If we can get the marginal farmer to stop producing, then we would expect that the farmers that would replace them would have higher costs and therefore produce fewer chickens.
The Vegan Society has its Growing Green campaign which springs to mind. There is also an article here about how Oatly helped a farmer shift more of his oat crop from animal feed to Oatly, so that is quite interesting from a business perspective and the article also discusses some of the tensions between Oatly and animal farmers. Some of these issues were also covered in the Rotten series that netflix produced, one of the episodes looked at chicken farming in the USA and how the industry functions, so that may be interesting if you haven’t seen it. But i agree this type of approach doesn’t receive as much attention as it could.
Compassion in World Farming USA has been working on this since at least 2014. You may want to listen to this interview with Leah Garces, former Executive Director. Start listening at 18:20.
Thanks, I am glad hear that they are working on that. It does sound a bit different than what I had in mind in that(judging only from the podcast you linked to) they are much more focused on welfare issues rather than economic ones. This surely has benefits that focusing on economics doesn’t, but I wonder if in a separate project/film, they could reach a wider audience by making a mostly economic case
In the podcast, Leah makes the case the economic case for farmers starting at 39:00. Farmers aren’t going to be listen to Our Hen House, but presumably Compassion in World Farming USA is making arguments appropriate for each audience.
Also, this very popular clip with John Oliver is heavily focused on the bad economics of chicken contract farming for the farmers. This was likely influenced by Compassion in World Farming USA’s work.
Thanks for this. I’d love to hear more if you could elaborate on some of your sections, such as the opportunities for farmers now or the analogy to how similar strategies fit into anti-tobacco lobbying.
I don’t have great answers to alternatives, but dairy farms can be turned I to beer breweries or plant-based milk facilities, chicken farms can be turned to mushroom growing facilities, most farms can grow crops that are not typically used for feed, but which ones depend on the region. A small number of farms in certain locations can support touristy businesses like pick-your-own-apples and go-on-a-hayride but that is not scalable. I’m looking into pig farms but I’m not sure about how they might be repurposed.
More and more jobs offer remote work, and while this won’t work for most farmers, I suspect a lot of (particularly young) would-be farmers underestimate the number of options.
I’m still thinking and will post if I come up with other ideas.
As for the anti-tobbacco lobbying goes, there was a group that was prominent in the anti-tobbacco movement that would go farm to farm educating farmers about crops that could be grown on the same land (peanuts and cotton as well as some corn and soy). Those crops were more mechanized than tobacco, so they would tell the farmers about how to get started. They framed it as “the tobbacco industry is not long for this world and we want to help you out.” As far as I know (I’m hearing this all second and third hand, so I can’t be sure) there was no insinuating that the growers were doing anything wrong.
If you remember it, what was the name of this anti-tobacco group? In a quick search, I found a few articles about tobacco farmers who decided to switch to new crops for various reasons, but nothing about a nonprofit trying to make switches happen.
I don’t know off the top of my head—sorry. I heard this second hand from someone involved, so I will ask next time I see the person I heard it from.
John Oliver (the comedian) did this piece on chicken farming. It’s the best attempt I know of to broadcast how terrible chicken farming is to the public, and completely stays away from animal welfare issues.
To what extent do you think the average farmer is likely to be replaced if they choose not to enter the industry?
Given the smallish number of large-scale American agribusinesses, I wouldn’t be surprised if convincing someone not to farm actually does reduce the number of farmers in the long term, but I’d expect it to have a smaller effect on reducing the number of farmed chickens. Though I know nothing about agriculture as an industry, I’d naively expect a drop in farmers to lead to higher chicken prices, which would then lead existing businesses to expand their operations.
Does anyone know more about the economics at work here? Maybe land-use laws make it difficult to expand existing businesses and easier for a new farmer to get started in a new location?
I think the economics are definitely worth worrying about, but I also think they work out. There are a small number of large firms that contract out to farmers(eg Tyson’s), but a large number of contract farmers. Farmers tend to stop producing more chickens at a point where the marginal cost of an additional chicken are increasing. If we can get the marginal farmer to stop producing, then we would expect that the farmers that would replace them would have higher costs and therefore produce fewer chickens.
The Vegan Society has its Growing Green campaign which springs to mind. There is also an article here about how Oatly helped a farmer shift more of his oat crop from animal feed to Oatly, so that is quite interesting from a business perspective and the article also discusses some of the tensions between Oatly and animal farmers. Some of these issues were also covered in the Rotten series that netflix produced, one of the episodes looked at chicken farming in the USA and how the industry functions, so that may be interesting if you haven’t seen it. But i agree this type of approach doesn’t receive as much attention as it could.
Thanks for the link, that sounds great