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 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.