A majority of the studied farms share a sense of compassion for the non-human animals previously raised as livestock. The expression of compassion for animals includes four different non-exclusive elements. I introduce these four elements below together with one quote and then detail some aspects of them in a meta-narrative paragraph about the sense of compassion for non-human animals.

Sending animals to the slaughterhouse is the act that most often triggers transfarmation, as farmers feel negative emotions, mostly pain, sorrow and sadness when doing so. This happens especially when animals are put in the transport to the slaughterhouse or in the sale barn. These two places seem to symbolize the irreversibility of the decision. These negative emotions are consistent with the care and love felt by compassionate farmers to their animals. Emotions of care and sadness about the death and loss of an animal are at odds with being responsible for sending the animal to slaughter – a classic case of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1962). Raised animals are sometimes named “faithful companions” [4] or “wonderful fellow creatures” [24]. These farmers recognize the individuality of animals and call them by their name. In particular, cows are praised for their care for calves (“Honey was a tame, gentle cow who loved all the babies” [9]) and their suffering when separated from them is acknowledged (“the experience of watching them leave, the mamas wailing for a week and the absence of their souls in the pasture haunted me” [8]). One farmer expresses directly that the repression of these emotions is important and taught at an early age: “I thought I was giving my children some sort of gift by toughening them up or desensitizing them to the reality of farming at an early age. I was in high school when we raised our first batch of chickens and I was traumatized the first time I saw them all being caught and hauled away in trucks, knowing their fate. I really believed that it was beneficial to educate my children from an early age to know the reality of food production. The chickens, cows, pigs, and goats were a commodity. Any sentimentality was accepted as a cute novelty, but we all knew not to get too attached or to show too much emotion.” [7]. These emotions are never totally repressed for these farmers (“It hurts me every time (…) this removal was always difficult to me” [21]) and the difficulty of dealing with these emotions accumulates over time (“more and more unbearable to me” [22]; “becoming more and more overwhelming” [5]) until it seems to reach a threshold where it is no longer bearable (“She would rescue goats that she could not bear seeing go to slaughter” [17]; “I could not stand to watch the babies leave their mamas even one more time to go to the sale barn FOR SLAUGHTER.” [8]). Passing this threshold triggers the necessity to act (“I had to do something to prevent that from ever happening again” [8]; “From now on, I will not send any more animals to their death” [24]). Once the decision is taken, the first priority is to stop the slaughter; finding a solution to sustain the farm without the income of selling animals usually comes second. While the confrontation with one’s emotions is usually personal, the second step triggers the need for external support (see Section 3.5).

Economic difficulties can be a strong incentive to transition out of livestock farming. All transfarms with this type of motivation are from the United States. Among these 6 farms, all of them used to have intensive operations with animals living in high density. Five of these farms raised chickens and one raised pigs. Chicken farmers operated in the system of “contract farming,” raising hundreds of thousands of chickens per year. The chicken industry in the US is depicted as particularly hard for farmers that are “isolated from other farmers and had no say on how the chickens were raised” [27], “living in constant fear that they [the company they contracted with] would let us go and we could not pay the bills” [26]. This system seems to trigger health issues among them: “When faced with mounting financial and health troubles from chicken farming, Bo and Sam decided to give up raising birds for good” [10]. Farmers in this system usually go into debt to build facilities where they will raise the animals delivered to them by the contracting company. Maintaining viable profits on such contracts seems particularly difficult. One farmer mentions that “they were losing five dollars on every pig leaving their farm” [11], and another that “the income from chicken farming proved to be unreliable” [10] thus “paying off their debt extremely difficult” [10]. Even when they manage to pay off their debts, one farmer mentions the “debt treadmill of poultry farming” that forces them to incur new debts “creating a vicious cycle of debt that leads to financial insecurity and bankruptcy” [10]. Mike Weaver, one of the transfarmers, became a spokesperson denouncing this system in the US. Transfarmers that quit this type of contract farming face the difficulty of postponing debt payment without an income. However, their transition is facilitated by the fact that they do not own the animals and can “simply” end the contract. In other words, they are not responsible for the future of the last animals they raised. They can also capitalize on the buildings they invested in to reinvent their farm.

The environment is the primary trigger of the transfarmation in only one case: “Humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels or animals is not sustainable. We have to change with the times and focus on renewable resources. There’s a shift away from systems powered by consumption and we are moving into building value instead” [14]. Environmental consideration is usually a secondary source of motivation. In the case of the Traylors for example, the husband consented to transfarm based on environmental arguments but this came after the original decision to transfarm was taken by his wife on compassionate grounds: “Richard had an epiphany. He recognized that being an environmentalist, he was a hypocrite if he took the cows to market!” [9]. Within the small number of farmers studied here, environmental consciousness seems to act mostly as a catalyser of transfarmation rather than a root cause.

Three farmers [2, 20, 25] mention that a transition to organic farming preceded their transfarmation. While organic standards allow for better welfare for the animal “reducing the size of the herd, enlarging the barn, abolishing tethering” [25], organic standards do not solve the emotional tension mentioned in section 3.1, “But even “organic” is not an ideal world: if a cow’s milk yield declined, she was no longer pregnant or sick, she was slaughtered.” [25]. For these organic farmers with compassionate motivation, the transition to organic is only a transitory step towards transfarmation.

In this section, I introduce an overview of the different pathways taken by the different farms studied here (Figure 1). The following paragraph provide some details about the most popular evolutions.

Coming from more extensive goat or bovine systems of production, the main system chosen for transfarms is the sanctuary model, where the farm dedicates itself to sustaining the lives of the animals living there and eventually sheltering new animals. This is consistent with the fact that 15 out of these 17 farms are motivated to transfarm by compassion (see Table 2). In the sanctuary model, the living costs of animals are usually met by sponsorships and donations. In this model the farm leaves the productive agricultural sector to enter the “care economy.” While the term “care economy” usually applies to humans, and usually mostly women, taking care of other humans (Folbre, 2006), I believe it can also be adapted to these farmers who dedicate their life to the care of non-human animals. Some systems called “care farms” (Hassink and Van Dijk, 2006) combine care for humans and care for non-human animals, as this system involves using the sheltered animals for therapeutic purposes. The other most popular transition for extensive bovine systems involves remaining in agriculture and producing fruits and vegetables on small holdings. Such market gardening relies on the small-scale production of labor-intensive and high added-value horticultural products.

For intensive systems raising pigs and chickens, all from the US, the most popular alternatives are to produce mushrooms or hemp, and market gardening. Mushrooms and market gardening have the advantage that buildings formerly used to raise chickens can be reused as mushroom fruiting chambers or as greenhouses. These farms are mostly economically driven in their desire to transition their farms to other agricultural systems of production, as the compassionate motivation is only present in 2 out of the 8 intensive farms and none of them turned into sanctuaries.

The role of external support is central to the transition process. Support is particularly critical for transfarmation with compassionate motivation. As described in Section 3.1, these are times of uncertainties and emotional distress for some: “One very cold and dark day, I sat down with all my brokenness, confusion, and desperation and wrote a letter to the universe asking for help. There was an intrinsic knowing that we would never be able to dig out of this alone. And, it turns out, there were people out there willing to help us out of our situation” [7]. Once the decision to stop selling animals is taken, transfarmers encounter two main problems: (1) finding food and shelter for the animal on the short term and (2) finding a production system to sustain the farm in the mid-term. The Figure 2 below synthesizes the process of transfarmation with the role of external support.

In all the stories collected for this article, two organizations, Rancher Advocacy Program (RAP) and Hof Narr, stand out for their centrality in supporting other transfarmations as they have, respectively, 10 and 9 farms being affiliated (see Figure 3). I considered a farm to be affiliated to a support organization when its name was referenced in the support organization website. As a consequence, the same farm can be affiliated to several organizations. RAP and Hof Narr were created by two women and transfarmers [8] and [19] and they are mentioned in stories as key agents of change. From famers’ stories, this support from RAP and Hof Narr is provided through:

As a final note, other forms of support appear to play a more modest role in transfarmations documented here. Two farms [8, 16] mention the role of the “vegan community” as a support for buying products from transfarms or making successful crowdfunding campaigns. The Transfarmation Project, Farm Transformers, Refarm’d, Stockfree Farming and It’s cowtime support organizations seem to play only a minor role in the stories of transfarmations.

Transfarmation is still a niche innovation where innovators are organized in small networks of individuals driven by their vision (Geels and Schot, 2007). Among these small networks (Figure 3) I identified two main types of vision about the future of transfarmation depending on the main motivation: based on either economics or compassion towards animals. This section discusses the potential evolution of some of the pathways identified and their potential for scaling up and tackling the health and environmental challenges of livestock operations.

Economically driven transfarmations come from intensive livestock operations that encounter economic difficulties, mainly among intensive operations raising pigs or chickens. Such transfarmations have the highest potential for ethical and environmental impact due to the scale of their production. The study here shows some farm transitions that involved leaving livestock farming, such as transitions from poultry operations to mushrooms or market gardening. However, if the motivation would be purely economic, the transfarmation process may be reversible if new economic activities involving raising animals become economically interesting. Also, it seems that this type of transfarmation is triggered by exploitative working conditions that are quite specific to the United States.

Half of the farms motivated by compassion transitioned to another agriculture production system. The most common system is market gardening (5 out of 9 farms that remained in the agricultural sector). A third of the 19 farms motivated by compassion transitioned to a farmed animal sanctuary model. Some authors refer to this model as the “refuge + advocacy” model, as they not only shelter animals but also have an educational role (Donaldson and Kymlicka, 2015). While ensuring a much better life for the animals rescued, this model comes with new difficulties. The sanctuary model still relies on animals living in captivity as well as actively restricting their natural behaviour, such as reproduction (Abrell, 2019). The main role of farmed animal sanctuaries is not to be an alternative to livestock farming but to educate the public to animal welfare with rescued animals as ambassadors (Abrell, 2019). Given the number of livestock in the world (Bar-On et al., 2018), sanctuaries can only play a niche role. To go beyond this model, the authors of Zoopolis (Donaldson and Kymlicka, 2011) suggest that sanctuaries should consider rescued animals not just as representatives of other animals who did not escape livestock farming (or “ambassadors”) but as individuals having a say in matters that concern them (or “citizens”) in inter-species communities (Donaldson and Kymlicka, 2015). Thus, sanctuaries could become incubators of new social arrangements between humans and non-human animals. These small-scale innovations could be blueprints for wider diffusion to society as a whole.

Among farms motivated by compassion, the Lebenshof Frei Sein, despite being a single case, is an interesting model for transfarmation related to the care economy. More broadly, this type of activity is part of the green care economy, where “nature” is used for health purposes (Haubenhofer et al., 2010). Care farming specifically involves domesticated animals in therapeutic interventions. Positive effects of these interventions on patients have been measured (Elings, 2012; Leck et al., 2015). The therapeutic benefits of care farms are rooted in human-animal interactions (Leck et al., 2014; Hassink et al., 2017). Care farms tend to consider non-human animals as co-workers, thus going further than the sanctuary model by not only recognizing previously farmed animals as victims but as agents who actively participate in an inter-species community. Considering non-human animals as workers raises the question of the “humane job” (Coulter, 2017), where non-human animals in the green care economy should not find themselves in new forms of degrading or lethal work. For Cochrane (2019), providing “good work” to a domesticated animal is possible under the condition that they take pleasure in the activity, can use and improve their skills, and that their agency is recognized in a community that values their contribution. While the positive effects of such farms on humans are more and more documented, establishing the conditions of a “humane job” for animals in care farms is still an understudied topic. Nevertheless, this re-orientation of productive farms to care farms offers interesting perspectives as a source of income and good reputation for farmers and for the agricultural sector as a whole (García-Llorente et al., 2018). However, it also requires specific skills from farmers to deliver these interventions and might require significant investment in training and education. Finally, it is also quite uncertain how many of such care farms would be actually needed before saturation of therapy needs.

Finally, our results show the key role that support organizations can provide to help transfarmers, especially those founded by transfarmers themselves. There is evidence that farmer-to-farmer support is particularly efficient to help transitions. The key role of such organizations has been extensively researched in the context of transition from conventional to organic agriculture. For instance, in Switzerland, the lack of a peer network to support transitioning organic farmers has been shown as a major impediment to change (Home et al., 2019). Studies from Ireland and Mexico indicate that knowing another farmer who transitioned to organic farming has a positive impact on the decision of a farmer to adopt organic farming (Hattam et al., 2012). Such support organizations could expand their support services in the future to help transfarmers to market their product. For instance, while the post-livestock farmers in our sample appear to show only limited interest in veganic agriculture (as only two farmers actually mention this approach in their farming practices) a study conducted in Germany showed that 17% of its respondent consumers are interested in products produced by veganic agriculture (Jürkenbeck and Spiller, 2020). This suggests a virtually untapped consumer base. However, veganic agriculture still has many technical, agronomic and socio-economic challenges (Schmutz and Foresi, 2017; Mann, 2020; Seymour and Utter, 2021). In this regard, Hirth (2021) details the case of the Bradley Nook Farm, one of the farms in this case study. One agronomic difficulty is for organic farmers to cultivate crops without livestock and thus without animal manure. In that sense, organic agriculture may only feed a large human population with intensive use of green manure and legumes (Chatzimpiros and Harchaoui, 2023). Another challenge is to conserve or find a substitute for manure as a source of habitats for soil biodiversity (Köninger et al., 2021). Even so, the veganic farming movement shows promise to radically transform and address some of our current food systems shortcomings (Nobari, 2021).

A first direction for research is about the role of gender in transfarmations. We have seen that, when it comes to support transfarmations, the two most active and central individuals are women. We also saw that the decision to transfarm is shared in equal numbers between genders. The results hint towards an equal share between genders in decisions to transfarm, suggesting a difference with traditional decision making about production in farms where men have the lead (Pandey et al., 2011). When compassion is the main motivation, women seems to play a key role. This tendency corresponds to women being on average more empathetic than men (Christov-Moore et al., 2014) and women having more empathy to non-human animals (Taylor and Signal, 2005). Knowing more about these gender specificities could help transfarmation support organizations to target their communication and tailor their actions.

A second direction for research is about the best way to steer farms out of livestock farming while avoiding conflict as much as possible. Transfarmation is potentially a supply-side solution for decreasing livestock by limiting the offer of animal products from farm owners to the market. However, it is still very uncertain how transfarmations could be scaled up to have a meaningful impact on the supply side. Therefore, complementary solutions on the demand side also need to be considered. Some policies may involve higher prices of animal products with information and nudging (Kurz, 2018; Vellinga et al., 2022). For example, a meat tax was implemented in Denmark but was repealed by influential opponents shortly after despite positive health outcomes (Vallgårda et al., 2015). At the EU level, a multi-stakeholder participatory policy, designed to engage with these powerful opponents, could establish consumption corridors to limit the quantities of animal products available according to social, nutritional, ethical and environmental factors (Fuchs et al., 2016; Cué Rio et al., 2022). The consumption corridor concept aims at establishing minimum and maximum standards for consumption to guarantee a good quality of life for everyone (Di Giulio and Fuchs, 2014). The balance of all these tools (support of transfarmation, tax, nudges and consumption corridors) for a post-livestock economy remains to be investigated.

The main limitation of this study is its data collection method. As this is desk research, I did not collected directly all stories, but were written by either the support organization or the farmers themselves. Therefore, the context in which these stories were written was not under my control, which could create bias. For instance, when farmers publish their story on the website of their farm they might want to portray themselves in a positive light to attract customers to buy their products, motivate readers to sponsor an animal or donate to their sanctuary. Similarly, support organization might have an interest in appearing particularly helpful to motivate other famers to join their organization or to trigger donations. Additionally, elements mentioned in these stories are at the writer’s discretion, which limits comparability between stories. Conducting interviews with farmers with the same set of questions could lead to more in-depth insights and greater comparability. In particular, more details about the economics of such transfarmation could be particularly helpful as most stories barely scratch the surface on such challenges. Furthermore, because I could not ask questions to farmers in this study, certain aspects may have been omitted from the stories. For example, some farmers do not explain the future of the last animals in their possession at the time of the transition to a post-livestock farm. Some farmers might omit the role of their partner in the decision to change the farm, which limits what could be learned about the role of gender in transfarmation. The final limitation of this study is that it solely focuses on the experiences of farmers who transitioned away from livestock production systems. In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the topic, it would be valuable to also investigate the perspectives of farmers who were unable to make the transition or who are opposed to it. These alternative viewpoints could offer insights into the obstacles that hinder successful transformation.