By Dawn Attride for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Tom and Sokchea Lim's farm looks the same as any other factory chicken farm on the outside, four large barns on 28 acres of land, built to house thousands of clucking chickens at a time. Yet, three of the barns are now silent and empty, with no trace of livestock, except for the eye-watering stench of ammonia and red plastic feeders hanging from the rafters - the only signs there were ever chickens here. In the last barn, a large group of people are excitedly huddled on a humid September day to celebrate the Lims' unveiling of their chicken barn-turned-greenhouse. It's hard to believe this new greenhouse, filled with light and myriad of greenery, once looked like the dark, musty barns adjacent to it.

Lim's repurposed farm is a funded project of Transfarmation, a Mercy for Animals initiative that aims to end factory farming - to improve both animal and farmer welfare - by transitioning farmers to growing crops. At the door of the greenhouse, Tom Lim and Leah Garcés, Transfarmation's founder and book author, snip a red ribbon to mark the public opening of the project.

In this airy 15,000-square-foot greenhouse, Lim grows tomatoes, squash, lettuce and peppers amongst other crops. Previously, the farm raised 540,000 chickens a year in all four barns when they were in production. Lim also grows oyster mushrooms in an insulated, food-safe aluminum trailer on the farmland. Collectively, the project will serve not only as Lim's farm, but as an education hub for factory farmers who want to transition out of the industry they're often "trapped" in, says Garcés, who is also CEO and President of Mercy For Animals.

For Lim, the opening marks his transition to sustainable farming and a more hopeful future. An immigrant from Cambodia who came to the U.S. more than two decades ago, Lim was able to set up a chicken farm on this land in 1999, just by taking loans from Farm Credit and signing a contract with Pilgrim's Pride, one of the largest chicken producers in the country. "When I come to the United States, I don't expect that I can buy any land for business. But you know I did it [and] so I'm very happy," Lim tells Sentient.

But over the course of the next 20 years, Pilgrim's Pride, like many other meat processing companies, required Lim to consistently upgrade the chicken barns to meet new standards -on top of paying off his existing loans with agricultural lenders Farm Credit. "The company forced me to do a lot of upgradings and installing new stuff and I cannot afford it. And they say if I cannot do any upgrade, they will cut me off and let me go," Lim says. Although he took out more loans from banks to keep up with the company's demands, he says he was eventually let go in 2018, leaving him and his family with debilitating debt.

This cycle of debt is what keeps farmers trapped and from speaking up, Garcés tells Sentient."If they try to fight against the system, they risk losing their contract and then losing everything."

After he was laid off, Tom and his wife Sokchea worked multiple jobs, seven days a week, to try to keep up with the debt. In 2022, he reached out to Transfarmation for help and so, the idea for converting his chicken barn into a greenhouse and eventually, a demonstration hub for other farmers, was born. Although Lim has not fully paid off the debt he has accrued - more than $150,000 - he is hopeful the greenhouse crops will reap enough financial reward in the long term to make the farm profitable.

Large meat processing companies like Perdue and Pilgrim's Pride pay contract poultry farmers as little as five cents per pound of chicken and pay nothing if their chickens die from disease, for example. This measly pay, coupled with the debt and barn upgrades, means some farmers barely have enough to pay themselves an hourly wage, let alone any kind of profit, says Tyler Whitley, Transfarmation's director.

As Lim leads the gaggle of attendees on a tour through his greenhouse, he explains the various growing systems and their crops, grown from organic seeds and in organic soil. Although he is not yet organic certified, he hopes to pursue the certification so he can access the higher price point markets and help his financial bottom line.

Organic vegetable farms use fewer synthetic pesticides and no synthetic fertilizers at all, among other federal requirements for certification. Lim has already contracted customers for much of his produce; buttercrunch lettuce, mushrooms and red swiss chard to Fresh Point distributors, and beets, lettuce and mushrooms to Sandhill Farm.

Inside the mushroom trailer, oyster mushrooms adorn the metal shelves, bulging outwards from their inoculated blocks made of hardwood sawdust and pulverized soybean hulls - the medium the mushrooms thrive in. The produce from this trailer, which is a little smaller than a caravan, will be enough to pay Lim an hourly wage and profit in full production, Whitley says. In contrast to the low pay for chicken, specialty mushrooms like oyster and shitake, are high crop earners, garnering up to $15 per pound, or more.

However, this blueprint for a better future required a steep investment from Transfarmation. Repurposing the Lim's chicken barn involved demolition, replumbing, rewiring and implementing four distinct growing systems, amongst other costly construction, Transfarmation invested roughly $700,000 in the project. Whitley says the conversion was done with longevity and education potential in mind - the hub is built to residential code, with running hot and cold water, power outlets and wifi. The barn's existing sturdy wooden beam structure remains in place with greenhouse panels made from polycarbonate sheeting, built to last at least 20 years, instead of weaker plastic alternatives.

Not every conversion has to be as large as this one, Whitley says, and the project has served as something of a test case for future Transfarmation farmers. "When other farmers come in, they don't have to learn the expensive lessons that we've learned and they can do [smaller models] at a much lower cost." This particular project has taught the Transfarmation team the ideal seasonal growing models for different crops, for instance.

Constructing a demonstration hub is new for Transfarmation. Typically, the organization helps farmers come up with a transition plan on an individual basis, or in some cases, issues innovation grants to make that plan a reality. An important caveat is that Transfarmation doesn't currently work with farmers who still have large amounts of debt to pay off. "However, the systems and models we're creating have the potential to service substantially higher levels of debt," Whitley says.

To bridge that gap, Garcés says debt relief or transition money needs to be granted at the federal level - a cause her team has been actively advocating for the past two years. Earlier this year, they applied for a USDA grant and regularly look for more opportunities for federal funding of their work.

The seeds of Transfarmation were sowed in 2014 when Garcés met Craig Watts, whose chicken farm was also in North Carolina. "I probably saw that person as my enemy as an animal activist but he invited me to come on his farm through a mutual friend. And sitting with him, I realized for the first time that chicken factory farmers are almost as trapped as the chickens [and] this was a system that oppressed them as well," Garcés says.

The two began working together to share his story and leave factory farming behind for mushroom growing. This relationship spurred Garcés to found Transfarmation in 2019. "Within the first few months we had hundreds of farmers writing to us and we realized we had really hit on something important, a missing link in breaking factory farming down," Garcés tells Sentient.

Lim and Watts represented just two cogs of the machine that is North Carolina's biggest, booming agricultural business which employs over 100,000 farmers: poultry. A recent Environmental Working Group study using artificial intelligence and aerial surveillance from the state's department of agriculture, found poultry farms house 357 million birds annually. That's up 43 percent since 2007 in response to growing demand.

But the pollutant-heavy Big Poultry industry has left its mark on the state. A Charlotte Observer investigation found North Carolina's chickens produce more waste than nearly 72 percent of the state's population. This waste flows into rivers and streams as a result of the state's lack of industry regulation. The investigation also found the state "shields the locations of poultry farms," which 230,000 residents currently live half a mile from and have no right to object to. People who live near these farms are at risk of respiratory problems from inhaling polluted air and drinking contaminated water.

While Transfarmation did not comment specifically on how many farmers want to get out of the poultry industry in North Carolina, they said they receive hundreds of requests for help from all over the country. For now, the Transfarmation team hopes the hub - and others they intend to build - will serve as a learning experience for those seeking to escape the grasp of factory farming. And for Tom and Sokchea Lim, the experience has been transformative: "I'm very excited to see the conversion of my whole barn to an educational greenhouse. I didn't really think [it was possible], but it happened, so I'm very happy," Tom Lim says, smiling.


Dawn Attride wrote this article for Sentient.


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Massachusetts farmers said they are bracing for revenue losses due to cuts in fresh produce SNAP benefits.

Starting Dec. 1, families who utilize the state's Healthy Incentives Program to buy food directly from farmers will see their benefits cut to just $20 a month, regardless of household size.

Rebecca Miller, policy director for the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative, said many farmers have structured their operations around SNAP customers.

"A lot of them are worried that they might have to do layoffs," Miller pointed out. "Especially for folks that they've hired that are multilingual that serve folks with SNAP benefits."

Miller stressed less money being spent at farmers' markets will have a ripple effect across the state's agricultural industry. Nearly 300 farmers participate in the SNAP program but state officials said the cuts are needed due to budget constraints.

The Healthy Incentives Program provides a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement when SNAP users buy healthy, local food directly from Massachusetts farmers. A state survey found that each dollar spent in the program results in an additional $2 in local economic impact, when farmers spend the money on local goods and services. Miller emphasized she is concerned about families getting through the winter.

"We expect to see increased food insecurity," Miller explained. "Folks needing to visit food pantries more, folks having to take more medicine to address chronic diet-related health needs."

Miller noted a study found each program participant increased their fresh fruit and vegetable intake by one serving per day, which leads to lower public health care costs over time. She added supporters are asking the legislature for an additional $10 million to maintain current funding levels through June. State officials say they are restructuring the program to ensure long-term viability.


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Kentucky farmers are using biosolids or "biosludge" from city sewage as cheap fertilizer but the price tag is high in terms of health, from toxic industrial chemicals known as PFAS and heavy metals contaminating produce, groundwater and soil.

Kentucky lawmakers have passed regulations experts said weaken protections for biosludge application on farmland.

Tom FitzGerald, attorney and former director of the Kentucky Resources Council, warned farmers in the Commonwealth trying to save money on fertilizer by using biosludge could end up with a significant headache down the road.

"Unless the cities are properly managing the waste that come into the system, and are sampling and clearing them for release for public use, I would simply tell the farmers not to take these biosludges, because the risks are so high," FitzGerald asserted.

According to open records request data from the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, lab samples from around a dozen wastewater treatment plants statewide revealed most contained detectable levels of PFAS.

Adam Nordell said his small family-owned vegetable farm dream in Maine became a nightmare when he discovered sewage sludge applied decades prior had irreparably contaminated his land and groundwater with high levels of PFAS. He stressed he wants to raise awareness among farmers in other states about the risks, and the importance of testing.

"We had been living on contaminated land," Nordell explained. "We've been drinking contaminated water. We've been irrigating our crops and supporting our livestock with contaminated groundwater."

FitzGerald said Kentucky's regulations reduce accountability and do not require cities to test the biosludge before it's applied to farmland.

"The cabinet should have used its authority to broaden out the list of contaminants, to broaden out the sampling and testing requirements and to broaden out the notice requirements to farmers," FitzGerald contended.

According to the Environmental Working Group, at least 5% of all crop fields nationwide could be using biosludge likely contaminated with PFAS. And since 2016, more than 19 billion pounds of biosludge have been applied to farm fields.


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Some Iowa farmers are putting a new spin on an age-old animal behavior.

They're using goats to remove weeds, overgrown brush, and non-native grasses - while helping some landowners restore native habitat to their acres at the same time.

Goats are pretty well known for producing milk and cheese. They're even used to help practice yoga these days.

Matt Vermeersch is a member of Practical Farmers of Iowa who farms about 170 acres near Red Oak - near the Nebraska state line - and operates Goats-On-The-Go, a side business stocked with herds of goats hungry for woody vegetation.

"A lot of really what we refer to as weeds, or pain-in-the-butt plants," said Vermeersch. "Things that they love are things like poison ivy, nettles, wild berry species with their thorns - then more woody species like Honeysuckle or buckthorn."

Vermeersch estimated his three Goats-On-The-Go herds cleared about 120 acres of various vegetation this year, and could have done more had it not been for Iowa's severe spring and summer weather.

There are ecological benefits to the practice, too. People hire Vermeersch's goats to clear land where native species once grew, and where farmers want it to return.

Vermeersch said while Iowa landowners are often trying to clear overgrown brush and reintroduce native species, sometimes they just need stands of troublesome weeds and brambles removed.

At which, Vermeersch said, the goats have no equal.

"It almost looks like a wildfire went through there the day after you take the goats off," said Vermeersch. "We refer to it as a grazing line - and pretty much anything under 6 feet tall all that will be left are sticks and stems. All of the leafy material underneath that is usually consumed."

Vermeersch said the goats are used for different reasons across the country.

In western states, for example, they are dispatched to clear brush that can serve as wildfire fuel, reducing the chances that a fire can become catastrophic by keeping the underbrush down.