How to Fight a Factory Farm

The rise of factory farms in the U.S. didn't happen by accident. Corporate influence over our political system has created policies that subsidize and incentivize the industrial model and allow factory farms to pollute with impunity, even creating new revenue streams that greenwash their climate impacts. Our food system does not have to be this way. Members of the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment are working to build sustainable alternatives to factory farms while advocating for policy reforms to dismantle the CAFO system and level the playing field for independent family farmers.

In the final episode of the series, hear from Frank James of Dakota Rural Action, Rebecca Wolf of Food and Water Watch, Bonnie Haugen of Land Stewardship Project and Noah Earle of Missouri Rural Crisis Center on how we got into this mess, and how to get out of it.

How to Fight a Factory Farm is produced by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a member of the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment. Thank you to our intern, Anna Karns, for her assistance producing this series, and to Noah Earle for the use of his song “Fry an Egg” for our theme music. Learn more about the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment at fightfactoryfarms.org.

References, further reading and ways to get involved

• • • Support the Farm System Reform Act
    • Packers and Stockyards Act In-Depth, Bryce Oates, 2024
    • Why we need an Agricultural Market Volatility Relief Program, CFFE, 2023
    • Biogas or Bull****? Friends of the Earth & Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, 2024

With COP27 fast approaching, and recent reports from the UNEP and the WMO warning that the world is not on track to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming, the time for real, transformative change is now. In this episode, hear from IATP Executive Director Sophia Murphy and IATP Europe Director Shefali Sharma, both of whom will be travelling to Egypt for this year's COP, on the role of civil society groups at COP and the false solutions for climate and agriculture that IATP is working to discredit.

At COP27, Shefali will be speaking on two panels which will be livestreamed for remote audiences:

• Net Zero Food Systems: Fact or fiction? on November 9 at 2:30 p.m. EET/6:30 a.m. CST
• Driving Systemic Change: Policy and Finance for Real Zero Solutions (with Sophia as moderator) on November 10 at 11:30 a.m. EET/3:30 a.m. CST

Find a transcript of this episode and more information about IATP's work on our website: https://www.iatp.org/blog/talking-cop27-episode-3

For almost 30 years, the world's countries have been meeting at an annual global climate conference, the UNFCCC COP, to try to coordinate responses to the accelerating climate crisis. In Episode 2 of our podcast series on COP27, we'll delve into the conference itself. Hear from IATP experts Ben Lilliston and Steve Suppan about the history and significance of the COP, starting with the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. We’ll introduce you to how the COP works, why the conference matters for agriculture, how COP agreements have been repeatedly undermined and why it’s so difficult to achieve real progress.

Find more information and an episode transcript on our website.

Our industrialized food and farming systems are both driving the climate crisis and threatened by it. How did we get here? And what path can we take toward true climate resilience? In this episode, hear from IATP’s Senior Policy Analyst Shiney Varghese and Senior Advisor Timothy A. Wise on the realities of the current globalized system of industrial agriculture and an emerging alternative: Agroecology. While some groups, like IATP and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, are pushing for agroecology to be recognized at COP27 as a climate adaptation strategy, resisting the agribusiness-funded status quo is an uphill battle. This episode introduces listeners to that struggle and its climate justice implications in the lead-up to the UNFCCC's 27th annual global climate conference, happening November 6-18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, COP27.

From the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy comes a new 4 part limited podcast series on climate, agriculture, and COP 27.