It’s difficult, and in many cases illegal, to chronicle the animal abuses that occur at factory farms with photographic evidence. Investigative journalist Will Potter is hoping to try a different route: using drones to photograph factory farms from the air.

He’s spreading the word and raising money with a Kickstarter campaign that has collected over $48,000 (with the promise of matching donations for everything raised over $45,000). The money will go towards drones, legal expenses, video production, and everything else necessary to create a short documentary, produce an e-book, and generally document factory farm abuse.

All the filth, waste, and manure from farm operations end up in these enormous pits.

It’s easy to ignore the animal cruelty that occurs in factory farms, but sometimes shocking videos of abuse manage to penetrate people’s consciousnesses. Over the years, organizations like The Humane Society and Mercy for Animals have filmed video that has had real ramifications.

In 2008, for example, a Humane Society investigation into a California slaughterhouse yielded footage of workers ramming cows with a forklift, kicking cows, and worse. Due to the food safety risk of the practices, 143 million pounds of beef were recalled–the biggest meat recall in the country’s history. The industry was upset.

While laws limiting activist and journalist access to livestock facilities have been around since the early 1990s, videos like the one filmed by the Humane Society in 2008 agitated the industry so much that it started pushing for harsh “ag-gag” laws, which make it illegal to photograph or film animal cruelty at livestock facilities. There are now so-called ag-gag laws in seven states, and many more are considering them.

“I’ve been reporting so much on the ag gag laws and seeing that the political climate is getting worse and worse. I just got back from a speaking tour in Australia, and ag gag laws are showing up there as well,” says Potter. “I wanted to think up ways to be more creative and ambitious.”

After seeing British artist Mishka Henner’s satellite imagery of industrial farm feedlots showing toxic waste lagoons that look like wounds in the landscape, he was inspired to look into drone photography.