A few years ago, Tyler Whitley was working at a help line for farmers in financial distress when a call came from a man who was raising poultry.

The caller said he worked round the clock rearing hundreds of thousands of chickens at his factory farm each year, yet had trouble affording a Walmart sheet cake for his daughter’s birthday. The man scraped together enough for the cake, but couldn’t cover the barns’ heating bill. The poultry company the farmer was contracted with berated him for spending money on a cake rather than the outstanding bill, Mr. Whitley recalled.

“This from a representative of a company that makes billions of dollars,” Mr. Whitley said. “I came to view factory farming as a cancer on rural America,” he continued. “I hated how it robbed people of their humanity and reduced them down to a number, to a widget, to a cog.”

Virtually all of the meat consumed in America comes from industrialized farms. Proponents say it keeps meat affordable.

But along with taking a heavy toll on animals, there is an environmental price. Factory farms generate greenhouse gasses and other pollution, and require vast amounts of freshwater. To combat global warming, the United Nations has urged people to consume less meat.

There is a human cost, too. The work is physically grueling and many farmers earn incomes below the poverty line. The median net revenue for poultry farmers in 2022 was $9,367, according to the Department of Agriculture, and many farmers owe significant debt on their farm buildings.