Chicken Farmer Testimonials on Sustainable Farming

“If you’re not taking care of your soil and your air, then you have nothing. It’s important for us to run a farm that is sustainable because we have children who will inherit this farm, and we want to make sure they can have this farm in 100 years.” - Rachel Rhodes, broiler chicken farmer from Centreville, Maryland

“We've recently taken the entire farm solar. We put in a 122KW system just this past fall. So, my farm actually generates the same amount of power that it would use in the year.” Terry Baker, broiler chicken farmer from Delaware

“We have all LED lights on our farm, which helps mitigate our energy usage. And we also have controllers that can tell us when the lights go on, when the lights go off, how much feed our chickens are eating. And if something's askew we can check it right away. - Rachel Rhodes, broiler chicken farmer from Maryland

“This is not only our farm. This is our home. This is where we live. This is where our children play. And we want to make sure that this environment is healthy and sustainable as it can be for our kids, their kids and our neighbors.” - Rachel Rhodes, broiler chicken farmer from Maryland

American chicken farmers share what they are doing to reduce their environmental impact, including emissions reduction, water conservation, vegetative buffers, solar power, lighting, litter management and more.

“Each chicken house has its own computer and it's the brain of the chicken house. It controls the fans. It controls the light. It controls the feed, the water, the temperature, the heaters. And we can now control all that with an app on our phone-- which gives us instant access to maintain the health of the birds, even if we're not in the immediate vicinity on the farm.” - Terry Baker, broiler chicken farmer from Delaware

“I like maintaining the farm, keeping it under control and keeping it clean. And we don’t want to pollute anything. I raised my children here, and we all go out and go fishing and boating, and just like everybody else, I want to keep the environment clean.” Janice Vickers, broiler chicken farmer from Millsboro, Delaware

“On our farm, we have a buffer system in between every chicken house. So any type of rain that comes and hits our heavy use pads or our roof runs into that grass buffer and is absorbed by the grasses that are there or the shrubs that we have planted. So that makes sure that none of the nutrients that could leave the farm leave the farm.” - Rachel Rhodes, broiler chicken farmer from Maryland