The Optimist’s Barn is a Substack devoted to fleshing out the techno-optimist point of view for farm animal welfare. How can we use technology to improve animal agriculture while preserving abundance? There will be a mixture of pieces from high-level analysis (e.g. “Is High-Welfare Farming Scalable?”) to nitty-gritty technical analyses of technologies like in-ovo sexing and high-expansion nitrogen foam.
Every article will be free for now, although there may be paid articles in the future. That said, if you want to support this work financially, all funds will go to Innovate Animal Ag, a nonprofit think tank that does a lot of the research that informs this blog, and that works with agricultural producers to implement some of the technologies we discuss here. (You can also give to Innovate Animal Ag in a tax deductible way by donating through the website).
Don’t hesitate to reach out to let us know what you’re interested in. What questions do you have about animal agriculture, or farm animal welfare? What topics would you like to see covered in the future?
