A straightforward guide to transitioning the factory farm system

Leah Garces‘ Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us from Factory Farming is a breath of fresh air…fresher than you’d breathe on a factory farm, certainly! Published by Beacon Press in 2024, this was a nice detour from some of the more academic books I’ve tackled this year related to veganism.

This is not a book about why to go vegan; it really is what the title promises. The book starts out by introducing the factory farmer as an ally. If you’re vegan, you’ll be familiar with Garces’ work as the CEO of Mercy for Animals, which leads The Transfarmation Project, which supports farmers wanting to transition to plants.

The introduction takes us back to when COVID-19 accelerated in slaughterhouses and how workers in these industries suffered. What I really loved about this book is Garces’ straightforward, honest language. There’s no painting a pretty picture of factory farming anyway, so the accessibility of this book should help anyone, young or old, realize there is a better way to farm.

Highlights worth mentioning:

• Garces meets several families and individuals who are chicken and pork farmers. Some want to transition to hemp, while others want to transition to mushrooms and do so.
• One former tobacco and chicken farm couple that transitioned to fruits, microgreens, vegetables, and flowers and want to make an event space for the public.
• Garces shares a personal story of taking home 3 chickens from a farmer who would have been killed: “They seemed to not really know how to be chickens, so I had to teach them.” One chicken was named Henrietta and had a profound effect on her family.
• Sisu Refuge was founded after Hurricane Katrina, when pigs escaped and Smithfield Foods didn’t want them back.
• Garces introduces Rosemary, Rene, and the late Elsie Herring who live(d) near hog spray fields in Duplin County, NC. The spraying began in the 1970s, intentionally near Black and Brown communities, and hog feces DNA has been found inside residential homes. If you’ve seen The Smell of Money, you’ll know these residents:

• We also meet workers in the industry, including a set of parents who suffered permanent conditions from their work in slaughterhouses, processing over 10,000 pigs per day. Unreal!
• One of Marisol’s jobs included smashing the heads of sickly piglets on the concrete. 😭
• Despite ICE raids, the meat industry pays only a small penalty for employing undocumented immigrants, which include children.
• Salaries for these workers have gone down over time, from $28 to 18/hour, which is below the manufacturing average. Brutal!
• Garces describes how female workers reported their supervisors (at Smithfield Foods) sexually harassing women on the job, resulting in the women being fired.
• The book ends with the progress that’s being made in transitioning farmers away from factory farms, animal welfare policies in the US, and the potential of meat taxes. Slaughterhouse line speeds direly need reform!

Transfarmation is a masterpiece of a book about farmers, animals, and residents/workers who are all victims of a broken food system. If you prefer audiobooks, I highly recommend it as you’ll get an even more personal sense of the stories in the book.

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