As Investigate Midwest reported last year, large animal feeding operations grew by 7.6 percent between 2011 and 2017, bringing the total to just under 20,000 farms nationwide. Booker’s bill would impact CAFOs with more than 700 cows, 2,500 adult pigs, or 30,000 hens. It would have no effect on smaller factory farms.

A senior aide to Senator Booker said that his office had spoken with a number of farmers operating CAFOs under the contract system, a business arrangement critics say traps farmers in debt and shifts all risk from meatpacking companies to individual farmers. Many of these contractors told the senator they would like to transition their farms away from CAFO operations if they could afford it. To make that process a little easier, Booker’s proposed legislation appropriates $10 billion a year to pay off individual CAFO operators’ debts and fund the development of alternate revenue streams like pasture-based livestock, specialty crops, and organic commodity production. In the meantime, the bill also shifts liability for emissions, manure disposal, and potential negative health outcomes in surrounding communities from individual farmers to the powerful meatpacking companies that process the animals and sell them.

Chris Petersen, an independent family farmer in Iowa who has lobbied on behalf of small-scale farms for decades, says he first saw Booker speak publicly about CAFOs back in January in Mason City, Iowa. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a presidential candidate lividly and publicly going after corporate ag. My god, he went on for 10 minutes. And I was just sitting there, smiling, like, good god.” Petersen has officially endorsed Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, and says he called the Sanders campaign Monday morning to encourage support of Booker’s bill. In Petersen’s estimation, the only three Democratic candidates for president who are serious about agriculture are Senator Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Booker.