In 2018 Leah Garcés, the president and CEO of Mercy For Animals, presented a big idea to the organization. The idea, helping farmers transition out of industrial animal agriculture, would be fully realized a year later with the launch of The Transfarmation Project®. It would set off a chain of events that would help seven farmers transition from factory farming and inspire hundreds more to reach out.
Now Garcés is publishing a book about her journey as a food-systems advocate and the farmers, workers, and animals who have forever altered her perspective. Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us from Factory Farming explores how food and farming policies have failed over decades and offers insights into the wave of change coming from a new crop of farmers and communities who are constructing a more compassionate and sustainable farming system.
Transfarmation starts with Garcés’s fateful 2014 meeting with North Carolina farmer Craig Watts, which would become kindling for the fire that is The Transfarmation Project. The meeting was unprecedented—animal activists and contract poultry farmers typically don’t see eye to eye. But the two quickly discovered that they had more in common than they’d expected. Both yearned for change, for a food system that better serves farmers, the planet, and animals.
In the book, Garcés focuses on the three groups most affected by industrial animal agriculture: farmers, animals, and communities. Each section explores their plights and commonalities and contrasts them with the cold realities of our consolidated, corporate food system.
The book culminates in a request for each of us to imagine a better food system—one where farmers have freedom, where greenhouses have replaced warehouses full of confined animals, and where people living near farms can enjoy their properties. This food system can be a reality—and that hope is the heartbeat of The Transfarmation Project and Garcés’s book.
“Too often in life, we only see what divides us, particularly when passions run high and we’re trying to change things. Battle lines get drawn. Opponents become enemies. Differences hold us back. In Transfarmation, we find another way. Garcés takes us on an intensely personal journey of breaking down barriers rather than knocking heads. Of finding new allies in unexpected places. Showing how we are all victims of the ‘cheap meat’ culture driven by Big Animal Agriculture. Heartfelt, insightful, grounded, and upbeat, this book provides deep breaths of fresh air and fresh thinking. Garcés shows us that when it comes to food and farming, we can all choose better..”
—Philip Lymbery, global chief executive, Compassion in World Farming, and author of Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat
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