This is a cross-post and interview with Brett Gallagher aka ‘Mad Farmer’ over on Substack. I recommend you check out his excellent writing over there, and consider a paid subscription to support his blog and farm!

December 17th 2024

My first introduction to farm animals, like most children, came through picture books teaching me their sounds. In these books, I saw contented cows grazing in green meadows, happy pigs rolling in mud, and chickens pecking freely around rustic barnyards.

Then there was Old MacDonald, probably the first farmer I ever learned about. Naturally, when singing this upbeat song, I imagined the farm as a happy place where farmer and animals lived together in harmony. Come to think of it, I may have originally assumed that food from McDonald's came from somewhere like Old MacDonald's farm (this couldn’t be further from the truth). The packaging on meat and dairy products reinforced this story – with images of animals in rolling fields under idyllic blue skies.

The reality of modern factory farming shocked me when I first discovered it, and like most people I spent years trying not to think about it. Until I simply couldn’t ignore it any more. Now I run FarmKind, an organization dedicated to making our food system kinder to animals, people and the planet.

It's clear to me what 'kinder' factory farming would look like. We could phase out the cruelest practices like battery cages and gestation crates. We could give animals more space and enrichment. This would reduce the risk of devastating pandemics like bird flu emerging from cramped, unsanitary conditions. We could stop using three-quarters of the world's antibiotics on farm animals, slowing the rise of drug-resistant superbugs. And we could protect local communities and the environment by managing waste properly, preventing the pollution of soil, air and water.

‘Kinder’ is one thing, but what would truly ‘kind’ farming actually look like? Would it still involve raising animals for food at all? And even if it's possible to farm kindly on a small scale, could this approach actually feed everyone at a reasonable cost?

*Brett’s family farm, as seen from above*

I'd been thinking about these questions a lot, when I came across Brett Gallagher's blog about his family farm near Prague. His words struck me: “The remedy, as I see it, is in the word 'culture'. Culture means, 'to cultivate'. Agri-culture has been replaced by agri-business. The families and communities that cared for and stewarded the land have been replaced by petrol, gears, and chemistry”. I reached out to Brett to hear his perspective on what kind farming means in practice.

An interview with the owner of a kind farm

Aidan: Your writing about rescuing chickens from ‘the egg factory’ really moved me. What does kind farming mean to you? What principles guide how you treat the land and your animals?”

Brett: We were heavily influenced by the ideas of permaculture when we began designing our farm. Permaculture’s guiding principle is remarkably simple - let’s work with, rather than against, nature. So much of modern farming techniques and landscapes are designed by and for machines. Confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) view animals as if they are cogs in a factory, rather than living beings that have their own physical needs and desires, with tragic consequences for the animals, people, and places they occur.

One of my farming and writing heroes, Wendell Berry, said that industrial agriculture took nature’s brilliant solution of cycling energy and nutrients, and neatly divided it into two problems - a waste problem and a fertility problem. Modern farming has confined animals to such small spaces that they produce manure in such quantities to be considered hazardous waste, while simultaneously starving the fields that grow crops to the point that they require synthetic chemical fertilizers that bleach the soil of life.

We provide the conditions for our animals to express themselves, to behave in a way that suits their nature, and by allowing the animals to do what they want to do, they help us achieve our goals of farming in a way that treats the health of the soil, the health of the animals, the health of people and community as one beautifully interconnected system.

I believe that in order to move towards more humane and ecologically sound farming, farms and agricultural landscapes must be beautiful. I’m from the Midwest in the U.S. and started farming on the outskirts of Prague six years ago. People come from all over the world to visit this city because it is beautiful, and its beauty fosters a feeling within each person that experiences it, that it is a place worth protecting and caring for. I feel the same when I visit kind farms and see sheep or geese grazing on diverse meadows under olive trees or fruit orchards. Compare that to a monoculture corn field or a warehouse stuffed to the gills with chickens in cages. Where would you rather be? A big part of the work we do on our farm is to show how agricultural can and should be beautiful and productive, and animals are key partners in making that possible.

Aidan: Wow — “farms and agricultural landscapes must be beautiful” is an inspiring vision. Can you walk us through what life looks like for animals on your farm? How does it differ from industrial farming?

Brett: We’ve had pigs, sheep, goats, ducks, and geese on our farm. They all behave differently and have their own roles on the farm: pigs plow, sheep, geese, and cows graze, and chickens scratch. I’ll focus on the chickens because most people eat some form of chicken or eggs on at least a weekly basis, and they are key partners in running our farm.

Our chickens are vital to the flow of energy and nutrients that allow us to grow a lot of quality food on what would be considered, by agriculture standards, marginal ground.

Annually, our flock processes literal tons of ‘waste’ - leaves, grass, food scraps, wood-chips, hay, horse manure, sawdust, you name it. We throw these materials in the chicken run and our hens work from sun up to sundown, every day of the year, turning it into a lovely finished compost that resembles chocolate cake. This compost is then wheeled out to the garden beds, where we grow enough food for our family and about 40 friends and neighbors on less than an acre of cultivated ground. This would not be possible without our flock of hens.

*These laying hens looked a lot worse for wear when Brett and Lucie rescued them from a factory farm a few months ago*

When we throw ‘waste’ to the chickens, they go to work scratching away, talons shredding the materials to smaller pieces. As they go, they deposit steaming droppings of a near perfect mix of nutrients that plants need to thrive. The flock of seventy hens can flatten a pile of leaves as tall as a man in a day. Once there is no longer a pile, it becomes harder for them to find food, since they can’t work with gravity to kick the pile down. That’s where I come in. Every morning, the chickens pause from their work to greet me at the fence as I sleepily walk through the small forest to the chicken run. They follow me to the hay fork that hangs on the coop and eagerly anticipate the feast that ensues. As I dig down, throwing the materials into a mound, hundreds of red wriggler worms and green sprouts are exposed. This is exactly what they want to eat. It’s also the highest quality food they can eat, and greatly reduces the amount of feed we have to buy. This is an example of setting up systems on a regenerative farm that become more than the sum of their parts.

Aidan: Some of the most impassioned animal welfare advocates believe that it’s not possible to farm animals in a way that is truly humane and not exploitative. As someone who clearly cares deeply about the welfare of your animals, how do you think about this?

Brett: The animals on our farm have one bad day. They are treated with respect and dignity, both during their life and when the time comes for their one bad day. I have immense respect for people that don’t eat meat, that forgo something they deem as unnecessary, mostly because I have such a hard time doing this myself. That said, I don’t see a viable system of agriculture without farm animals as a key partners in producing food and maintaining soil health. They are also such a joy to be around and work with. I’d invite anyone having a bad day to spend an hour with our ducks while they splash around in their pond. You will walk away smiling.

Aidan: What are the trade-offs involved in farming animals this way?

Brett: We sell our eggs for about double the price as from the egg factory. This does not mean that the eggs in the supermarket our cheaper. There are many unaccounted costs to our health, infrastructure and ecosystems. As it stands, small farmers must rely on educated, concerned customers to willingly pay more for quality food. What I like to tell people who visit the farm and question the price of our eggs is: you are not what you eat. You are what the thing that you eat, eats. Our eggs might look similar to the ones in the supermarket, but they are about as similar as a wolf is to a pug.

Aidan: What inspired you to uproot your life in the Midwest and start Prokop’s Farm?

Brett: I came to Prague on a study abroad trip, met my wife, Lucie, and I’m still here ten years later. We started a guerilla compost pile behind our apartment building, which grew into a bucket garden on our balcony and eventually guerilla gardening on unused land nearby before we decided to rent a plot of land from the city of Prague and make a go at farming. We were motivated to start growing our own food out of a desire to remove ourselves from a system that destroys the life it depends on. All that noble stuff.

But to be honest, after spending years in the idea-lands of school, we felt like doing something real, and trying to make living off a little piece of land is about as real as it gets. What keeps us going is just how rewarding, meaningful, and engaging it is.

Aidan: In your view, could this kind of farming feed everyone?

Brett: I think small, regenerative farms have the decisive argument in their favor that there isn’t any other option. I’ve seen estimates that industrial agriculture uses 14 calories of energy in fossil fuels for every one calorie of food out. I’m sure the numbers could be debated, but the conclusion is the same. In our current system of feeding ourselves in the industrialized world, we need fossil fuels before we can eat food. This is a system that is, by definition, unsustainable. Small farms are the future of farming, because they are also the past and present reality of how most people feed themselves around the world.

From individual farm to global food system

Brett’s work reminds me that ‘kind’ farming – at least by most people’s standards – is possible. But kind farmers like Brett stand no chance of competing with big business in a system where market failures abound:

Economic externalities: The true costs of factory farmed products – like animal suffering, environmental destruction, and worker trauma – aren't reflected in supermarket prices.
Information failures: Consumers can't make informed choices because we're so divorced from where our food comes from and misleading labelling obscures how our food is produced.
Monopolies: Massive agribusiness corporations like Tyson Foods have enough market power to coerce well-intentioned farmers into adopting their practices, while pushing the financial risks onto those farmers through predatory contracts.¹

Our governments, which are supposed to address market failures, are failing us too. Agribusiness spends more on lobbying in the US than the defence sector and big oil. It's no wonder that laws against animal cruelty exempt farmed animals, or that “ag-gag” laws have been passed to try to silence those who expose cruel practices.

The way forward

But not all hope is lost. Markets and governments may have failed the food system, but the charity sector promises a way out. The best charities working to fix the food system are levelling the playing field by changing the rules and incentives so that culture-led farming may one day be able to compete with business-led farming.

One example is The Humane League. Their corporate campaigns bring the cruelty in big brands' supply chains to customers' attention, forcing companies to choose between improving practices or damaging their reputation.

*Volunteers coordinated by The Humane League and other animal welfare organizations pressure McDonalds to adopt more humane standards for chikens raised for meat.*

This works – they've convinced major companies like Walmart, PepsiCo, and KFC to phase out the cruelest practices. Through their global network, they've secured commitments from 2,400 corporations across 70 countries. In the last decade alone, the percentage of cage-free eggs in the US increased from 10% to 40%. Plus, it’s cost-effective. The Humane League can prevent a chicken from a life of confinement in a cage for just 85 cents.

Making brands wear more of the costs of their cruel and unsustainable practices, and addressing the information failures that suppress demand for kinder products makes it easier for farmers like Brett to compete.

But The Humane League isn’t just changing corporate behavior – they're changing the law. They successfully defended California's Proposition 12, a landmark law protecting basic animal welfare standards, from industry litigation. They advocate for stronger welfare regulations across the country, from state-level bans on battery cages for chickens to mandatory humane slaughter practices for farmed fish. By pushing for legal reform while pressuring companies to improve, they're tackling the problem from both angles.

But can kind farming feed the world?

People often point out that giving animals more space requires more land. However, what's less known is that factory farming actually makes global hunger worse: We currently lose 30% of global crop calories by feeding them to animals instead of people directly. Factory farming isn't feeding the world – it's making feeding the world harder.

A sustainable and humane food system is possible, but it requires changes in how we eat. Most Americans consume far more meat than health guidelines recommend. By reducing consumption to healthier levels and embracing emerging alternatives like plant-based options, we could feed billions more people while giving farm animals better lives.

This is what inspired me to launch FarmKind. We help people identify and support the organizations making these changes possible. While buying from farmers like Brett is great when you can, the reality is they're rare.² But we can all support the charities that are making it possible for all animal farming to look more like Brett's farm.

The future of farming doesn't have to be a choice between cruelty and scarcity. By supporting the right organizations and making mindful choices about what we eat, we can build a food system that's kind to animals, sustainable for the planet, and capable of feeding everyone.

Thanks for reading!

Footnotes

1. For instance, it’s been thoroughly documented (see here, here, here and here) how corporate chicken businesses lure farmers into taking on huge debts to start operations, and then imposing unexpected costs and forcing them to absorb losses from high rates of disease and mortality, trapping them in cycles of increasing debt. [↑]

2. Farms operating under a “Community Supported Agriculture” model are a growing initiative, so it’s worth checking whether you have a Brett in your backyard. But be careful not to assume that small and local = sustainable and humane. Do your due diligence and be skeptical. [↑]