{"id":55618,"date":"2024-04-01T01:00:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T09:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=55618"},"modified":"2024-04-03T09:00:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T17:00:53","slug":"from-livestock-to-lions-mane-the-latest-from-the-transfarmation-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2024\/04\/01\/from-livestock-to-lions-mane-the-latest-from-the-transfarmation-project\/","title":{"rendered":"From Livestock to Lion\u2019s Mane, the Latest From the Transfarmation Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter.\u00a0Become a member today<\/a>\u00a0and get the next issue directly in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

In an old tobacco barn in North Carolina, Craig Watts completed three trial runs growing shiitakes before he felt ready to scale up. Then, he pulled a shipping container into one of the four giant barns that have been sitting empty on his farm and connected plumbing and electrical systems that once\u00a0provided water and lighting for thousands of chickens<\/a> destined to become Perdue products. <\/p><\/div>

\n

Now, he\u2019s working on expanding his vegetable production on the farm, so that by later this spring, once he\u2019s (hopefully) ready to sell his mushrooms at the local farmers’ market, he won\u2019t be \u201ca one-trick pony.\u201d<\/p>\n

“The pool of people you can actually help is very limited,\u201d because if a farmer has significant debt from building and upgrading poultry, hog, or dairy infrastructure, and most do, the numbers just don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Over about a decade, Watts has become an indie rockstar of agriculture, famous among a niche fan base of food-system reformers, animal-welfare advocates, and farmers who\u2014after\u00a0years of being exploited<\/a>\u00a0by big, industrial meat companies\u2014decided to speak up and get out<\/a>. So it was only natural that he also became a poster child for\u00a0Transfarmation<\/a>, a Mercy for Animals program that aims to set those farmers up for an independent, profitable, fungi-focused future.<\/p>\n

Civil Eats\u00a0covered the program<\/a>\u00a0in early 2020, shortly after it launched, and Watts\u2019 slow but determined journey illustrates the complicated reality of progress over the past four years. While some of Transfarmation\u2019s farmers have laid a lot of groundwork, the path between feeding livestock and misting mushroom substrate was always bound to be muddy.<\/p>\n

Transfarmation\u2019s director, Tyler Whitley, estimates that over the last four years, about 100 farmers have reached out expressing interest. Of those, his team has worked with 12 farmers, nine of whom are still enrolled. (The ones who dropped out, he said, mostly did so due to health issues.)<\/p>\n

While Transfarmation farmers also grow vegetables, hemp, and other crops, most focus on specialty mushrooms\u2014including blue oyster, lion\u2019s mane, and reishi\u2014due to strong market demand, infrastructure compatibilities, and the fact that they are\u00a0\u00a0quick and fairly easy to grow.<\/p>\n

The pandemic hit right after the project launched, and that set the timeline back significantly, says Whitley. Then, as the team identified challenges, they attempted to meet each one along the way. They contracted with an agricultural economics firm to analyze the costs of conversion and return on various crops. When it was clear farmers were having difficulty finding buyers for their mushrooms, they hired a \u201cbusiness engagement specialist\u201d to identify restaurants and other buyers farmers might link up with. When farmers faced technical barriers, they found contractors who could visit each farm and help troubleshoot.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowth is always a process,\u201d Whitley said.<\/p>\n

Some farmers are now closer to running a viable business than Watts, who balances his mushroom business\u00a0\u00a0with his other, related job helping former contract farmers find resources through the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. The Transfarmation team holds up\u00a0Tom Lim<\/a>, for instance, as a model. At a North Carolina conference in early February, attendees enjoyed his mushrooms in a tofu scramble for breakfast and a tartlet for dinner and they went home with a bag of dried mushrooms and instructions to make broth.<\/p>\n

Still, Lim\u2019s path to making money on his crop has been rocky. After scheduling challenges\u00a0made it difficult for him to make a profit at farmers\u2019 markets<\/a>, the Transfarmation team helped him find wholesale buyers; that approach has been successful so far. Now, in addition to his participation in the pilot project, the program is leasing part of Lim\u2019s farm from him and spending about $200,000 to convert one of his old chicken barns into a demonstration greenhouse that aims to show what\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve got to get my shit together and quit tinkering and get this thing working to where it\u2019s replicable….There\u2019s a learning curve that I can shorten for other farmers.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But Watts said one of the biggest limitations of transition programs like Transfarmation and Miyoko\u2019s Creamery\u2019s\u00a0Dairy Farm Transition<\/a>\u00a0is that \u201cthe pool of people you can actually help is very limited.\u201d If a farmer has significant debt from building and upgrading poultry, hog, or dairy infrastructure\u2014and most do\u2014the numbers just don\u2019t work. It\u2019s more complicated than just switching what you grow in a giant, windowless barn. They\u2019re made for one thing, raising chickens, and changing requires investments that can\u00a0cost upwards of $100,000<\/a>. Not to mention the fact that small farms growing specialty crops and selling directly to consumers are often barely scraping by.<\/p>\n

That leads to a deeper question: Is the system being proposed actually going to be any better, financially, for the farmer compared to what they might make with an industrial chicken contract?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the $64,000 question,\u201d Watts said. \u201cBut here\u2019s the difference: If this doesn\u2019t work out, I can walk away. I\u2019m not going to lose anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Transfarmation’s financial projections predict an annual operating income of between $26,000 to $284,000, in addition to about $17 per hour in hourly wages to the farmer, based on converting one poultry house to a greenhouse, depending on the crop grown.)<\/p>\n

Whitley, meanwhile, said that while the number of farmers may seem small and the finances complicated, the point was never to go out and help farmers transition out of operating concentrated animal feeding operations one by one. He sees each Transfarmation farmer, instead, as a mini pilot project. As they experiment and work out the kinks, the Transfarmation team collects data and documents successes and failures. Then, they write it all down and put it online.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur theory of change is working with individual farmers to create publicly accessible resources that anyone can independently implement,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’re not trying to recreate another power-holding system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, as Watts puts it in his characteristically humble way, \u201cI\u2019ve got to get my shit together and quit tinkering and get this thing working to where it\u2019s replicable. I see that as my role. There\u2019s a learning curve that I can shorten for other farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story has been updated to better reflect Tom Lim\u2019s experience transitioning to mushroom farming.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter.\u00a0Become a member today\u00a0and get the next issue directly in your inbox. Now, he\u2019s working on expanding his vegetable production on the farm, so that by later this spring, once he\u2019s (hopefully) ready to sell his mushrooms at the local farmers’ market, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":740,"featured_media":55592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3256,4368,4479,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[4440],"class_list":["post-55618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-welfare","category-business","category-farming","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Livestock to Lion\u2019s Mane, the Latest From the Transfarmation Project | Civil Eats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Four years ago, Mercy for Animals launched a program to transition farmers from animal agriculture to fungi production. 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Since 2015, she has reported on agriculture and the food system with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In the past, she covered health and wellness and was an editor at Well+Good. She is based in Baltimore and has a master's degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism.","sameAs":["https:\/\/x.com\/lisaelaineh"],"url":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/author\/lheld\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/740"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55618"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55868,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55618\/revisions\/55868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55618"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}