The Industrial Agriculture Conversion Act

Introduced by Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass) and Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), the IACA (H.R. 9794/S. 5176) would accelerate the transition to more humane and sustainable farming systems.

Through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Congress committed billions of dollars to agricultural conservation initiatives aimed at combating climate change. It is critically important that this influx of funding is invested in meaningful changes with proven environmental benefits. Yet, IRA funding is currently being used to prop up the existing disastrous factory farming system. Animals suffer immensely in factory farms, and they harm our climate and poison rural communities. This problematic system has been pushed upon rural America by a handful of multinational corporations that dominate our agriculture industry. They are cutting corners, polluting our air and water, and exploiting farmers and animals alike. Many contract farmers feel trapped in this system and are looking for a way out.

The Industrial Agriculture Conversion Act would help farmers to find that way out. The bill would empower farmers to transform our agriculture system by using conservation funds to convert factory farms into more sustainable operations that allow people, animals and the planet to thrive.

At any given moment in the United States, 1.7 billion chickens, pigs, cows and other animals are confined in massive concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), also known as factory farms. These animals suffer from caging, crowding and intense deprivation of their natural behaviors, with most animals crammed together in windowless barns with no access to the outdoors for their entire lives.

Industry consolidation has put thousands of farms out of business and forced the rest to contract with the handful of corporations that dominate the industry. These corporations have almost total control over how their contract farms operate, dictating that animals be kept in dangerously crowded conditions that expose workers to hazardously polluted air and diseases, all to maximize company profits. They often require farmers to invest hundreds of thousand — even millions — of dollars constructing factory farms that do not offer stable financial returns, burying farmers under extreme debt.

Factory farms are resource-intensive and big polluters. They have high energy and water demands and are significant sources of air pollution and potent greenhouse gases, like methane. The confinement-based model of livestock production is linked to 6,340 million metric tons of climate emissions each year. Industrial agriculture is also the leading polluter of rivers and streams in the United States, the second-largest source of wetland contamination and the third-largest source of lake pollution.

American factory farms produce an estimated 940 billion pounds of manure each year and release dangerous particles into our air and drinking water, causing serious health problems. A recent study directly attributed almost 18,000 deaths each year to air pollution from CAFOs. These health and environmental impacts, as well as the economic impacts of factory farms, such as noxious smells that degrade home values, are disproportionately felt by marginalized communities. The misuse of antibiotics on overcrowded factory farms also accelerates the development of dangerous, drug-resistant diseases that threaten human health.