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 provided water and lighting for thousands of chickens destined to become Perdue products.
Now, he's working on expanding his vegetable production on the farm so that by later this spring, once he's (hopefully) ready to sell his mushrooms at the local farmers' market, he won't be "a one-trick pony."
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—after years of being exploited by big, industrial meat companies—decided to speak up and get out. So it was only natural that he also became a poster child for Transfarmation, a Mercy for Animals program that aims to set those farmers up for an independent, profitable, fungi-focused future.
Civil Eats covered the program in early 2020, shortly after it launched, and Watts' slow but determined journey illustrates the complicated reality of progress over the past four years. While some of Transfarmation's farmers have laid a lot of groundwork, the path between feeding livestock and misting mushroom substrate was always bound to be muddy.
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