In Defense of North Carolina’s Poultry Farmers and the System That Sustains Them

April 25, 2026
In Defense of North Carolina’s Poultry Farmers and the System That Sustains Them
A Response to Inside Climate News
A recent Inside Climate News feature on Craig Watts, a former Perdue contract grower, paints a sweeping indictment of contract poultry farming as a predatory, exploitative industry rigged against the very farmers it employs. The story is sympathetic, well-written, and almost entirely one-sided. North Carolina’s agricultural community deserves a fuller picture.

One Voice Is Not the Whole Story

The article’s central narrative rests almost exclusively on the account of a single former grower who left the industry a decade ago, supplemented by quotes from advocacy organizations not only explicitly opposed to the contract farming model, but to animal agriculture as a whole. Missing from the piece: the voices of the roughly 1,800 active Perdue growers currently raising flocks across the region, many of whom have worked with the company for decades and built stable livelihoods doing so – not to mention the rest of North Carolina’s poultry community, including growers and others that support tens of thousands of jobs and generates billions in economic activity in some of the state’s most rural and economically vulnerable counties. Their stories didn’t make the article.

This follows a pattern that the Partnership has been keeping a close eye on. Last October, our Chairman Peter Daniel outlined the funding sources and activist groups behind the disturbing rise in the anti-agriculture movement in the media. This movement is playing out in North Carolina with coverage supported by climate advocacy funding that relies on a narrow set of activist voices and framing while presenting indictments of the poultry industry and animal agriculture more broadly across the state.

The Partnership has also repeatedly shared polling data that shows that our state’s poultry-producing communities stand by their farming neighbors, with just 14 percent of residents saying they trust this kind of slanted coverage. 

Unfortunately, this points to a larger trend of declining public trust in the media. Earlier this year, Pew Research found that a majority of Americans do not trust the press to act in the public’s best interests, and last October, Gallup reported trust in the media at an all-time low of 28 percent, with an eye-popping 70 percent expressing little or no confidence in the media. 

These numbers are unfortunate, but when we see hit pieces like this ICN activism masquerading as journalism, it is little wonder why.

The article also touches on ongoing policy debates around poultry regulation, but again presents a narrow view of what is at stake for farmers.

The Regulatory Delay Is Responsible Governance

The article frames the delay of the poultry payment rule as a favor to industry donors and a betrayal of farmers. But for many growers, the concern is more straightforward. Changes that move toward flat-rate compensation risk removing farmers’ ability to be rewarded for hard work, effective management, and consistent performance. Farmers who invest in their operations and do the job well expect to be able to earn more for these efforts. Policies that flatten those differences risk undermining that basic incentive. 

What’s Actually at Stake

Craig Watts’ personal story is genuinely compelling, and his decade-long legal battle reflects real courage. No one disputes that contract farming, like any business relationship, can go wrong, or that bad actors exist in any industry. The question is whether one man’s difficult experience, filtered through the lens of advocacy journalism and anti-industry organizations, constitutes a fair indictment of a system that supports thousands of North Carolina farming families.

We believe the answer is no. North Carolina’s poultry industry is not perfect. But it is a vital, functioning part of our agricultural economy, and the farmers who participate in it deserve to be seen as the professionals they are, not as passive victims of a system they willingly joined, and many of whom choose to remain in by their own volition every single year.