NEWS: An ex-contract poultry farmer has spoken out against his former industry as part of the launch of a collaborative ‘Farmer Toolkit’ to help other farmers move away from harmful animal agriculture.

The Farmer Toolkit is the brainchild of three of America’s largest farmed animal welfare organisations and their respective farm transition initiatives: Mercy for Animals’s Transfarmation project, Animal Outlook and Miyoko’s Creamery Dairy Farm Transition programme.

“I was looking for alternatives to the contract poultry industry…I wanted something that was entirely mine, where I didn’t have to worry about a huge corporation cutting me off and losing my income,” said farmer Greg Carey from Ohio, a poultry farmer for 20 years who now speaks out against corporate influence. “That’s what I found in Transfarmation. I talk with the staff and their technical consultants regularly and together we’re creating a business that I fully control.”

This isn’t the first time Carey has spoken about the pressures farmers face at the hands of corporations and his decision to leave animal agriculture. Two years ago, in a video posted to the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA YouTube channel, Carey recounted his struggles.

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The Farmer Toolkit is, according to Vegconomist, a first-of-its-kind online information resource to provide comprehensive guidance and support to farmers like Carey looking to free themselves of industrial animal agriculture and shift to ‘plant-focused’ farming.

Mercy for Animal’s Transfarmation project has had numerous successful farmer transition case studies including Halley Farm, where they shifted from poultry to help farming; and Craig Watts, another ex-chicken farmer who switched to cultivating mushrooms.

Another farmer helped by Mercy for Animals, Mike Weaver, states that since moving to hemp production he expects to net around $1 million per year, compared to the $7,000 he netted from chicken farming.

“I hope this creates a whole lot of new jobs and new revenue for the farm,” said Weaver on the Transfarmtion website. “Farmers in America are in bad shape. … I’m trying to do my part to get that changed.”

Said Dr TJ Bradford, director of Animal Outlook’s equivalent project: “The Farm Transitions Program aims to provide farmers with equitable access within plant-based markets by assisting with comprehensive business planning; agronomic assistance and technical support, legal advocacy, finance and debt relief options; as well as publicity and farm visibility components.”

The Farmer Toolkit gives farmers access to state-by-state resources, funding opportunities, marketing guidance and framework budgets. Information on speciality crops such as hemp and various species of culinary mushrooms is also available, many of which can be grown indoors to make use of former chicken sheds and other existing infrastructure.

“The small family dairy farmer is getting squeezed out between competing with Big Ag and the declining consumption of fluid milk over the years,” said Miyoko Schinner, founder and CEO of Miyoko’s Creamery. “As a growing food company, we have a responsibility to directly support and engage farmers, especially when they are struggling. By helping a forward-thinking dairy farmer transition to growing regenerative specialty crops, we can uplift farmer livelihoods in the emerging plant-based food economy.”

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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