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The Farm Bill Explained with Judith McGeary
282 Plays8 days ago
You can't understand the modern food system without understanding the policy that shaped it. And you can't understand US food policy without understanding the Farm Bill.
Judith McGeary is an attorney, farmer, and the founder of Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a national organization that supports independent family farmers and fights corporate consolidation of the food system. In this conversation, Judith breaks down what's actually in the Farm Bill, adds some needed nuance to the subsidy debate, and explains what's at stake as the bill moves through the US Senate right now - and how you - yes you! - can help shape it.
In this episode, we dive into:
- What the Farm Bill actually is and why it touches nearly every aspect of our food system
- Why the Fam Bill has become a divisive political issue after years of bipartisan support
- The pesticide liability shield and what corporate overreach looks like in practice
- Opportunities for regenerative funding through direct farmer advocacy
- Where the Farm Bill stands right now and what's at stake in the Senate
- Concrete ways you can show up and influence the outcome before it's too late
More about Judith McGeary and Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance:
Judith McGeary is an attorney, activist, and sustainable farmer. After earning her BS from Stanford University and her law degree with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin, she clerked for a Federal Appeals Court and went on to private law practice. After seeing how government regulations benefit industrial agriculture at the expense of family farms, she founded the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance to promote common-sense policies for local, diversified agricultural systems. She and her husband raise sheep, chickens, and cattle on their farm outside of Austin, Texas.
Find more and take action at the links below:
- Farm Bill Action Hour Toolkit — get involved now
- News about the House-passed version of the Farm Bill: Farm Bill UPDATE: A Major Win & Setbacks - Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
- Deep dive into the issue of fair prices/ price supports for farmers from National Family Farm Coalition: Fair Prices for Farmers - National Family Farm Coalition
- IATP for deep dives into several Farm Bill topics: Agriculture & Food Systems | IATP
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.
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Transcript
Toxic Chemicals and Corporate Influence
00:00:03
Speaker
They've made billions of dollars selling toxic chemicals and not doing very good warning labels on them. And so they've come in and they've asked Congress to protect them from liability.
00:00:16
Speaker
I want to emphasize what a completely, fundamentally outrageous concept this is. We have got to change the food system. The other side of it is so good.
Agrarian Futures: What's Broken and How to Fix It
00:00:34
Speaker
In season two of Agrarian Futures, we're starting with a simple question. How did we get here? Farms are disappearing. Land is getting harder to access. Rural economies are hollowing out.
00:00:46
Speaker
But there are people building better ways forward. Join us as we investigate what's broken in our food system and what it looks like to build something better.
The Farm Bill's Comprehensive Impact
00:01:01
Speaker
You cannot understand American agriculture without understanding policy, and you can't understand policy without understanding the Farm Bill. It's probably the single most important piece of legislation for our food system. To help us navigate this topic,
00:01:17
Speaker
Today we have Judith McGarry. Judith is an attorney, activist, and sustainable farmer who founded the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, FARFA, a graduate of Stanford and the University of Texas.
00:01:30
Speaker
She uses her legal expertise to lead national coalitions advocating for common sense policies that protect local food systems. Judith, welcome to Agrarian Futures.
00:01:42
Speaker
Thank you for having me on. To get us started, for those of us who haven't spent 500 hours reading legislative text, what exactly is the Farm Bill and why is it so important?
Legislative Process and Extensions of the Farm Bill
00:01:53
Speaker
So the Farm Bill would sadly take you more than 500 hours, quite possibly.
00:01:58
Speaker
This is a bill that is... supposed to be passed by Congress every five years, and it covers everything almost that touches our food and our agriculture systems.
00:02:10
Speaker
So it covers, first all, a huge part of it is the food nutrition programs. So WIC, SNAP, or food stamps under the old name, all of these consumer-oriented programs are all within it. It covers forestry.
00:02:24
Speaker
It covers conservation programs. It covers crop insurance, which most people would think of as the subsidy programs. It covers the small but very important programs that right now support regenerative ag and local food systems.
00:02:40
Speaker
It sets the entire framework for our food system. And we were supposed to have a new bill back in 2023. So we're now in 2026 and still operating on an extension.
Contentions in the Farm Bill: Nutrition and Corporate Power
00:02:53
Speaker
Where does the bill stand today? And why has it been so hard to get a new one passed? ah Yeah, so we're we're we're having Groundhog Day every time we talk about Farm Bill. And I'll start with where it stands now, which is that the House has passed its version of the Farm Bill. We finally have made it through one chamber, for good or for ill. And now the question is when the Senate takes it up.
00:03:16
Speaker
At the time we we're recording, word is that the Senate Agriculture Committee will start working, doing its public work on the Farm Bill around mid or late June.
00:03:27
Speaker
And could you help us understand, like, what what are the key points that are at tension and kind of what are the different factions that are opposing each other and on what measures?
00:03:37
Speaker
There's a lot of different types of major battles happening. it's It's a very, it is a very contemptuous bill. So traditionally, the Farm Bill has been passed on a bipartisan basis with Democrats focused on the nutrition programs, rural Republicans on the farm subsidy programs, and everybody agreed to sing Kumbaya and pass this bill.
00:03:59
Speaker
What happened is that in last year's reconciliation bill, the nutrition programs got massively cut. There has not been the appetite on the Republican side to try to restore that money through the farm bill.
00:04:11
Speaker
And so the usual bipartisan coalition that linked arms to pass the farm bill has completely cratered and and shattered. And so you have that big fight of what is happening with our nutrition programs, what is happening with these programs that are so important, not just to urban communities, although that is how it is usually seen, but a huge number of the people dependent on these programs or who benefit from these programs are in rural communities as well.
00:04:37
Speaker
So there's one fracture line.
Corporate Overreach in Agriculture Regulations
00:04:39
Speaker
Another fracture line, which is growing, it's been present, but this this round it's taking greater prominence, is between the big business and the public interest. This has always been a problem. you know Corporate agriculture has dominated the farm bill for for decades now. But what we're seeing is finally some real pushback because of, I'd say, the significant new levels of overreach by corporate agribusiness. And so the highest profile example of this is the pesticide manufacturer liability shield, which would protect companies like Bayer and Syngenta from paying for the harms that their products have caused. It's the one that's made the most headlines. It is not the only one that is really causing ripples in this farm bill.
Local vs. Federal Control: The Save Our Bacon Act
00:05:26
Speaker
And I'd heard about the pesticide liability shield, but I hadn't heard about any others. What are some of the other corporate overreach So I'd say the the other big one that has gotten attention and really caused a lot of political problems within Congress is the one over local control over livestock production.
00:05:45
Speaker
So some people may or may not be familiar with the proposition that passed in California that said you could only sell meat in California, pork if it wasn't crates, you know, the pigs weren't crated. It had to be from hens that weren't in cages.
00:06:00
Speaker
And the big industry went nuts over this because it's not limited to California. It's limited to what sells in California, but that affects the agriculture industry across the country because these guys have become so dependent on large-scale, consolidated, you know, frankly, multinational sourcing and distribution chains.
00:06:19
Speaker
And so they've passed the or they've proposed what was first called the EATS Act, now called the Save Our Bacon Act. to basically try to rip local control away from both cities and states if it affects how things might be produced beyond there.
00:06:35
Speaker
And that's been another major flashpoint. And then there's lots of small ones that haven't gotten the tension, but we're seeing the the tension in the dynamic. So around the issue, for instance, about electronic animal ID and is the Farm Bill going to bless basically USDA's overreach on mandating electronic cattle
Influence of Corporations on Federal Regulations
00:06:54
Speaker
ID?
00:06:54
Speaker
There's more tensions, more fracture points happening. It sounds like when you talk of corporate consolidation, there's a link with federal regulation. It seems like those two things a little bit work hand in hand. Larger scale homogenous regulation seems to kind of favor corporations versus maybe more. city or statewide regulation. Is that correct to kind of draw that link?
00:07:20
Speaker
So I'd say that's generally true. And this is one of the interesting dynamics that you see, the difference between sort of environmental movement and the regenerative ag movement or or the interests of them. In general, what we've seen with the environmental movement was this push for federal regulation because states and local governments were assumed to do a race to the bottom, that if you did have baseline federal regulations that you were going to get this horrible race to the bottom.
00:07:46
Speaker
What we've seen, though, with agriculture, for the most part, is that because the big agribusinesses have so much sway, it's so they have such better access in D.C.
00:07:59
Speaker
than local small-scale groups, that they get very favorable rules written, and it's enabled them to create and prop up these massive operations that are so reliant on, as I said, international sourcing and distribution.
00:08:18
Speaker
Often, big agribusinesses are the ones in there saying, we want uniform federal regulation, whether it be on produce safety, meat processing, or livestock production, so that we can have these operations. And then they set they they set it where it's a very low bar, you know, for for them.
00:08:36
Speaker
And a few weeks ago, FARFA sent a delegation of farmers to Washington, D.C.
FARFA's Legislative Advocacy for Farmers
00:08:43
Speaker
What were you guys fighting for and how did it go?
00:08:46
Speaker
It was wonderful. We brought farmers from several states. I would just first want emphasize that it's a long-term process. Before I say anything about what happened at that fly-in in those two days, what this is is about is building relationships between the farmers and legislators so that their' legislators and their staff hear the real voices on the ground of people who are impacted. and start understanding why so many of these policies are problematic and what sort of reforms are needed. i think one of the best things that came out of that is that also the farmers created a network, and they're now, they've got their own chat group where they're staying in touch and supporting each other in advocacy and their farms, which just is a fantastic piece that came out of that that we hadn't planned for.
00:09:32
Speaker
Walk us through some of the key measures you guys were fighting for. Several of the specific measures that we were fighting for and that we continue to fight for in the Senate, these are continuing and long-term, is around meat processing, or around meat processing.
00:09:48
Speaker
So there's a bill called the Prime Act, which would allow farmers to take animals to what's known as custom-exempt slaughterhouses and then sell the meat. They already can take their animals to custom-exempt slaughterhouses. They just can't sell the meat afterwards.
00:10:02
Speaker
This doesn't actually make sense from a food safety standpoint. It's just a market barrier, a regulatory barrier. A small mini version of the Prime Act made it into the house a House Farm Bill, and now we're fighting for it to be in the Senate Farm Bill and expand it to its full scope. Another bill also dealing with meat processing is known as the Local Foods Act.
00:10:23
Speaker
And this deals with, frankly, even smaller farmers who are interested in having the animals processed on the farm. And consumers are looking for this sometimes for animal welfare reasons, sometimes for cultural reasons or religious reasons like halal or kosher meat, or simply even the nearest custom slaughterhouse maybe several hours away in some
Consumer Awareness and Supporting American Farmers
00:10:43
Speaker
areas.
00:10:43
Speaker
And so what the Local Foods Act does is it clarifies and expands options for people to buy a live animal or a share of a live animal. and choose to have it processed on the farm.
00:10:55
Speaker
Also in the meat world, but now going in some ways more to the mainstream consumer, we're fighting for mandatory country of origin labeling. So I know where my t-shirt comes from. I can look in the tag and it tells me what country my t-shirt comes from.
00:11:11
Speaker
But people who go to a grocery store have no idea where their beef or their pork is coming from. Many people assume that that nice little USDA label means somehow American.
00:11:22
Speaker
It doesn't. It has nothing to do with where that animal was raised or processed. And so we want American consumers to simply know where their meat comes from and be able to choose whether they want to be providing support to American farmers and ranchers building a more secure food system in our country.
00:11:41
Speaker
So that's one big category of reforms that we were looking at and working on. Did those make it into the bill? On the House side, the Prime Act, a small ah small version of it made it in.
00:11:54
Speaker
Local did not. And MCOOL, mandatory country of origin labeling, did not. Really? Nope. neither Neither one made it in. And local didn't even get a vote.
00:12:05
Speaker
But M. Cool's gaining ground. The Senate's a whole new game. I mean, it's one of those things where if we can get it into either chamber's version, you have a fighting chance to keep it in.
00:12:16
Speaker
And so when our people went, they they met with House members and they met with Senate offices because we have to be working both sides of it. Right. And just for for her listeners that maybe are not super familiar, the mandatory country of origin is basically but ensuring that if your beef in the supermarket is coming from Brazil, that, you know, you have to like note that on the label. Right. Correct.
00:12:42
Speaker
Exactly. so it would just be like a little label that's on the meat that says, you know, if it was born, raised, and slaughtered here, it would say born, raised, and slaughtered in the USA. Or it could say born, raised, and slaughtered in USA, comma Mexico, comma Brazil.
00:12:54
Speaker
Or born, raised, and slaughtered in Australia. Wherever. Just something on that label that you'd be able to know where it was coming from. And one of the other measures that you guys were fighting for was, or against, I should say, was the pesticide
Opposition to Pesticide Manufacturer Protections
00:13:09
Speaker
liability shield. Walk us through that. And if it didn't make it into the House version, is there still a chance that it's going to make it into the Senate?
00:13:20
Speaker
I'll start with yes, the fight is far from over. So this is a provision that the big pesticide manufacturers have been fighting for. They've made billions of dollars selling toxic chemicals and generally not doing very good warning labels on them.
00:13:42
Speaker
So it's known as agency capture. You know, many people go in and out of the federal agencies and back into industry and then back to the agencies. And the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, is a prime example of industry capture.
00:13:55
Speaker
And so the warning labels on these products are very downplayed and do not list all of the actual risks. And Bayer, in particular, which bought Monsanto, has faced huge liability because of the lack of appropriate warning labels on glyphosate, on Roundup.
00:14:15
Speaker
They don't like that. It hurts the share prices. It means they don't have as much money for their CEOs and and their C-suite officers and their stockholders. And so they've come in and they've asked Congress to protect them from liability.
00:14:28
Speaker
and And this is... It just... I want to emphasize what a completely fundamentally outrageous concept this is. The basic concept of our legal system and our market system, both our free market economic system and our legal system, is that if you sell something and it hurts people, you should pay for the harm you caused.
00:14:51
Speaker
The market system can't work otherwise because otherwise you get to make whatever the heck you want and sell it and make money from it. And there's no downside. It's why we have liability. And the idea of pesticide manufacturers coming in and just saying, oh, no, we're special. We get to make all of the money and hurt, you know, our products may hurt people, but that's their problem.
00:15:11
Speaker
It's just outrageous. And yet they're doing it. And they've passed these at the state level in a couple of states already. But in most states, they're getting knocked down. And this is, again, where you see this move to, well, let's go federal. let's Let's go where it's harder for average people to have their voices heard because it's simply less access in D.C. than in your state capitals. And let's set this federally.
00:15:37
Speaker
And so they had actually put it. The House Agriculture Committee had put this manufacturer liability shield in the farm bill that came out of the House Ag Committee. And an amendment was introduced on the floor of the House that stripped it out. And I want to emphasize on a significant bipartisan basis.
00:15:55
Speaker
This was a very strong vote, far stronger than I expected it to be. i I was very happily surprised to see that the masses of calls, people talking about this, people engaging their legislators with it, had an impact on both sides of the aisle very strongly.
00:16:16
Speaker
That's great to hear that there was that bipartisan support against it. So we've talked about the kind of meat processing, meat regulation reforms. We've talked about the pesticide liability shield.
Challenges in Crop Insurance and Regenerative Practices
00:16:30
Speaker
a final area that you guys champion is the supporting regenerative ag.
00:16:35
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about that and what the current bill is looking like with respect to supporting regenerative practices? This area of supporting regenerative practices, there's sort of two categories of reforms that are important. One of which is seeing some progress, the other, not so much. So i'll I'll start with the bad news, which is one of the areas that we need reform in is how the crop insurance, which is one of the key subsidies, is structured. Because right now, crop insurance is structured in such a way that it really penalizes many regenerative farmers for regenerative practices by classifying them as riskier for some reason than just spraying the pesticides and herbicides.
00:17:18
Speaker
And they're really, although there's discussion around that, there's sort of, you know, sounds being made. There's no real reform being done on that front yet. The other area is money, paying farmers, helping farmers to implement regenerative agriculture.
00:17:35
Speaker
Because the reality is, although regenerative agriculture is by far both the most economically as well as environmentally sustainable method over the long term, it can have significant upfront costs.
00:17:47
Speaker
which may be very difficult for a farmer either trying to transition or to start out to implement regenerative from the beginning or or move to a regenerative. And this comes through primarily programs through USDA and RCS. And RCS staff has been slashed.
00:18:04
Speaker
under the reconciliation bill that we mentioned earlier, there just isn't a lot of push for really generous funding to NRCS. For instance, there was a very good new program developed that we are very supportive of,
00:18:17
Speaker
to provide funding for state healthy soils programs. Wonderful. This is a great way to do it. Instead of creating new funding for it, they pulled funding from another conservation program.
00:18:29
Speaker
Not so useful. You know, we we don't want to be, yes, we want state healthy soils programs, but we don't want to be doing so at the expense of the existing federal healthy soils programs. We want both because we need more of this. You know we're talking with legislators about that. i don't know. i don't have the temperature in the Senate yet to to be able to to guess whether we're going to make headway there on it.
00:18:49
Speaker
The Democrat camp traditionally, you know, has been very focused on SNAPs and food stamps, like this these sorts of like food support and benefits. Republicans traditionally have been quite focused on support for, for lack of a better word, like industrial farmers. So the crop insurance support for commodity prices, et cetera.
00:19:11
Speaker
It sounds like the snap has been like, you know, pulled away or like has been radically radically cut that and that hasn't been reinstated. And on the other hand, support for crop insurance and commodity prices have been raised from my understanding, like the floor.
00:19:28
Speaker
has actually been raised. So like the the amount of support has increased. So what have the Democrats won in this kind of... ah It sounds like it's kind of gone worse on both sides. Less food stamp support and more support to kind of industrial commodity farmers.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways, what you just said is a good, simple summary of it. There are people, particularly Dems, that particularly that from the more agricultural-oriented states that are you know more concerned also still with supporting agriculture, although very often it's still the industrial-scale agriculture yeah know that that dominates their state and therefore their interests.
00:20:10
Speaker
I think what I would like to reframe it as would be the area where both parties eightyities can and should deliver is around, first of all, conservation programs particularly, because conservation programs, having farmers convert to regenerative agriculture brings so many benefits.
00:20:32
Speaker
It improves the environment. It reduces the toxins in the air and the water. It increases water capture and, you know, decreases water use. It sequesters carbon in the soil. And at the same time, it increases the long-term profitability of our farmers and our rural communities. So, you know, this is one area where Republicans and Democrats should be coming together.
00:20:55
Speaker
It's an area where sometimes they are and you see hints of it and we're trying to build on those hints of it. We pick our issues on several things.
00:21:06
Speaker
First and foremost is what helps our farmers. What is important to our farmers? Our second lens that we run everything through is what can bring people together.
Conservation Programs and Bipartisan Opportunities
00:21:16
Speaker
It's not a coincidence that there is, I'm about to say, are places that people we can bring people together. Other ones that we just talked about are why far first priorities because this is part of how we decide priorities. And I'll say, you know, supporting small-scale local agriculture, which in our case, ah one of the big bottlenecks is around meat processing.
00:21:35
Speaker
You're reducing the carbon footprint of agriculture and food by bringing it more local. You're supporting animal welfare. You're supporting food quality and food access. Traditionally liberal Democrat side. Not, you know, it doesn't have to break down that way. You're also supporting small businesses and reducing regulatory burdens and increasing options for startups.
00:21:59
Speaker
That's traditionally the more Republican side of the discussion. So one of the things we need, and I think one of the key pieces on any of these issues is bringing it down to the actual impact on the ground and forcing, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat,
00:22:16
Speaker
to think about what this means for people rather than political philosophies when it comes down to it. Yeah, absolutely. And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about the Maha movement. How do they come into the picture and change, if at all, the kind of classic balance between Democrats, Republicans? Yeah.
00:22:40
Speaker
The movement for better food in our country is something that I think will just continue gaining power. And it is of deep interest to people along the entire political spectrum who are looking at our country and saying,
00:22:56
Speaker
We have an epidemic of chronic disease and illness in our children. You know, what the heck just happened here? Well, we have termed the Maha moms, the moms who look at this and say, why does my kid, why do half the kids in my kid's class have significant health problems?
00:23:14
Speaker
That's just wrong. And so much of it comes back to our food. Not all, but a lot of it. I think that movement is here to stay. I think it's going to grow. And I think the question of whether it changes the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans comes down to who actually takes it seriously. Because ultimately, people want to see change.
00:23:36
Speaker
And if they are told that someone's going to change it and it's not changed, they're going to keep looking. So the question is, who is going to buckle down and be willing to face up to corporate interests, large-scale corporate interests, which, let's be clear, people on both sides of the aisle get significant donations from large corporate interests.
00:23:57
Speaker
And who's going to be willing to say enough is enough about this? And I think that is far from determined, yeah. Yeah, it's not easy to shift the ship in any direction.
00:24:08
Speaker
It takes really a really long, long time, which kind of gets me to my next question, which is that, you know, we're talking here about like what we can do within this current farm bill to, you know, shift things towards
Vision for a Sustainable Farm Bill
00:24:22
Speaker
towards better. But obviously we're talking very incremental shifts that, you know, are politically salient at the moment, kind of tinkering, tinkering at the margins.
00:24:31
Speaker
If we were to zoom out and kind of look at the role of the farm bill and ideally what it should look like in ah in like a better world, in a world that supported small-scale, diversified, organic farmers growing nutrient-dense food, how should we think about that? What would a farm bill in that better world look like?
00:24:53
Speaker
If I got to sit down and write a farm bill, I think that there'd be several key provisions. One is, and I'll just lay this out there, is not get rid of everything that people call subsidies. There often is this knee-jerk, just get rid of subsidies. It's like, no, hold on a second.
00:25:09
Speaker
Agriculture, if you look at it, because it is a basic necessity of life, it is not something you can just go and change your mind about whether you need it or not on food. and because of its impacts on our soil, our water, our natural resources, doesn't work well if it's literally just in an unrestrained total free market.
00:25:30
Speaker
Not to mention the fact that we aren't in a free market right now because of the corporate consolidation. So to me, an ideal farm bill starts with first some serious antitrust provisions that direct money and attention at our agencies to breaking up the monopolies and the oligopolies. It has provisions that keep the safety nets for farmers that are appropriate to create the framework in which a free market functions well.
00:25:59
Speaker
Free flow of information. We touched on this with MCOOL, with mandatory country of origin labeling. But just more generally, making sure consumers know and have the information available about their food is a vital piece for the market to work. So strong labeling provisions across the board.
00:26:17
Speaker
A safety net for farmers to ensure that a major drought doesn't put good farmers out of business. A safety net that rewards sustainable methods that in the long term reduce the risk and improve our resilience.
00:26:32
Speaker
Strong funding for conservation programs to support farmers so that They aren't making money by planting fence row to fence row and mining their natural resources, which the farmers don't want to do. There's no farmer out there that's like, geez, I want to run this land down by by planting it to death.
00:26:48
Speaker
They do what they have to do to survive, and what they're being told is the right thing to do by the agencies for a large part. So we need to reverse that, and we need to support farmers individually. implementing the conservation methods that are best for their farms.
00:27:04
Speaker
Then something that starts, and, you know, I won't get into the nitty gritties, but the sort of things that we've talked about with the PRIME Act and LOCAL, where we're looking at what I would call scale appropriate regulation, looking at that again across the board.
00:27:19
Speaker
Let's talk about the level of risk that is involved based on how you grow it, what scale you're growing at, what kind of distribution system it is, and create regulatory systems that are appropriate.
00:27:34
Speaker
There should be food safety regulations. I'm all in favor of them. Let's focus it on actual risks and take into account the impact those regulations have on the availability of healthy food.
00:27:47
Speaker
So if you only look at microbiological risk, if you only look at what are the chances that somebody gets a foodborne illness, and you'd pay no attention whatsoever to, well, what does this mean to how consolidated the food supply is, whether healthy food's even available, whether the levels of toxins on the food are available. You you don't integrate a holistic picture. You're not actually getting people healthy, safe food.
00:28:16
Speaker
To me, that's my ideal farm bill. There's a lot to be done. And I want to double down on the support to farmers crop insurance piece of it, because, you know, you mentioned that you think that should exist. It just should be supporting the right type of practices and and supporting all farmers, not just industrial farmers.
00:28:38
Speaker
Could you explain to the listener, what does that support look like today for a large industrial row crop farmer versus how does it look today for, i mean, you're a small scale diversified farmer for you as a
Barriers for Small Farmers in Crop Insurance
00:28:54
Speaker
farmer.
00:28:54
Speaker
Right now, there is insurance available for most products, not all, that protect against you know natural disasters, which include slow-moving natural disasters like droughts or or a horrible, you know a massive over-rainy season.
00:29:12
Speaker
that prevented crops from being harvested or or planted. Basically, it's an insurance program, right, is the current form, where the government subsidizes the insurance premium. So the farmers aren't paying what it would cost for the full insurance.
00:29:26
Speaker
There are several problems, and I think this is not my deep area of expertise. I also want to suggest that are their are groups better qualified than me to really get into the details. But big picture, it rewards people for the more the better.
00:29:38
Speaker
You know, the the bigger your operation is, the more insurance you're capable of getting. And it doesn't create really any incentives for growing methods or operations that reduce the risk of weather disasters or indeed market downturns.
00:29:53
Speaker
Now, there's something that was supposed to do that called whole farm revenue protection. which was supposed to come in and be like, okay, here's the alternative and we're going to reward people for being diversified because it reduces the risk.
00:30:06
Speaker
But it's still very difficult to get for small farmers and for truly diversified because it's more complicated. And it's a lot simpler for the insurance providers to write a one big policy covering 50,000 acres of corn than 50 small policies for these small farmers, and they don't make as much money.
00:30:25
Speaker
The other problem is you get these outright situations. Let's say take even the grain growers, the the commodity growers, what we'd say. So you've got a regenerative, somebody who's trying to improve their soil health, and they want to do cover cropping to improve their soil health. If they don't kill that cover crop with a toxic herbicide,
00:30:44
Speaker
They're penalized in the crop insurance program because it's considered more risky if you don't do a kill off of your cover crop that maybe your next production won't be as good. There's actually not really good grounds for this. It is an assumption based on a pro-conventional agriculture, pro-chemical agriculture bias, not data, not real life experience.
00:31:07
Speaker
But they're pushing the farmers who are trying to improve their soil health, and they put in a cover crop to improve soil health, and then they have to use a toxic herbicide that reduces their soil health. Yeah, that's insane.
00:31:18
Speaker
I spent some time in Northern Montana in the Golden Triangle where they grow wheat. And it's an area that wasn't really farmed until like the 1980s. And people moved up into that area then and basically do wheat. And it's like you do one year wheat, one year fallow, one year wheat, one year fallow.
00:31:37
Speaker
And it's an area with like very little rain and very kind of challenging conditions. But because of the insurance model, basically you plant your wheat, the year is an okay year, it grows great, it doesn't grow, insurance payout. And basically it kind of incentivizes this model of this kind of unsustainable, unviable model of agriculture that wouldn't work if it weren't for the crop insurance industry.
00:32:06
Speaker
And I was on a farm that was like trying to do an organic diversified rotation. And the headache of getting the insurance for all the different crops and even the level of insurance that you got for all these different crops was not the same as what it was for wheat, corn and soy.
00:32:21
Speaker
And so it was unsustainable to to pursue that more diversified model. Exactly. And I want to say, so when I said also I think there need to be subsidies in quote marks, it isn't necessarily crop insurance. Crop insurance is the current form of subsidies. I i think that the the whole crop insurance model, we could certainly improve. There's lots of places we can improve it. I don't think it's the best model. If you look pre-1980s, what we had was a price support system, which really did think about a free market system and how agriculture does and doesn't fit into it.
00:32:57
Speaker
Because the problem in agriculture is there's so many variables that are outside the control of an individual farmer. If it's a bad drought year, everyone's going to have poor yields. Now, if you've done lots of good soil health and you've done all these other things, you will have less bad yields,
00:33:15
Speaker
But you're still going to have low yields. This is drought. If it's flood, if it's fall, whatever. There are things that are outside the farmer's control, very broad range. What you would see pre-1930s, when a lot of the program started, is let's say there's a wonderful year. The rainfall's perfect.
00:33:33
Speaker
Everybody has a bumper crop and the price is greater because the market's flooded and farmers go out of business in a bumper crop year. And so the sorts of programs that came in in the 1930s were aimed at how do we level out these sort of crazy highs and lows that are outside the farmer's control in good years when it's a bumper crop buying up a bunch of this?
00:33:56
Speaker
so that the price doesn't crater, putting it into storage. And then in bad years, when the prices skyrocket because every farmer had bad yield, consumers aren't suddenly hit with grocery bills that quadruple, will release some of these stored goods.
00:34:12
Speaker
And it just it ensured that the farmers made a fair price, that they could stay on their land, that they could make a living. that consumers didn't face crazy gouged prices, which, by the way, under corporate consolidation, we face again with the incredible gouging that happens.
00:34:29
Speaker
And it didn't create the sorts of incentives that we have with this insurance program. So again, there are groups. IATP is a wonderful group, I think, for really sort of digging into this. National Family Farm Coalition that we're a member of.
00:34:43
Speaker
does really nice work around dairy specifically on on these sorts of issues. There thoughtful ways to create programs, actually I'd say programs rather than subsidies, that ensure that farmers can make a fair living raising food for their communities and that don't create counterproductive incentives, which is what we have now.
The Importance of Active Policy Involvement
00:35:05
Speaker
Right. And I've heard you talk in other podcasts about activism, i guess is what you were calling it. ah But obviously, Farfa, your guys' mission is really to get the voice of farmers and even non-farming consumers, you know, involved in specific legislation at the state level, at the federal level.
00:35:26
Speaker
Talk a little bit about that and why it is so important for all of us, but especially farmers, to kind of get involved in in this. I think the only way we're going to get any of these changes, anything approaching this dream vision of the Farm Bill or these smaller ones that are are vital still for, you know, in the current Farm Bill, is if people get involved.
00:35:46
Speaker
Because the reality is if people don't get involved, then what the legislators hear are the lobbyists. And, you know, you honestly, i don't think it's fair to even get angry at them at that point.
00:35:58
Speaker
If people don't show up, don't explain their positions, don't say this matters to me, why shouldn't they listen to the lobbyists? Who are they supposed to listen to? It's also vital that when we show up,
00:36:11
Speaker
We show up in a real way, a human way, because let's say you've got a well-intentioned legislator, which actually i think a lot of them are. Like, you know, like it's not what they want to do bad things. They're up there to to try to do their job.
00:36:25
Speaker
And yes, they want to get reelected come November because no one wants to lose their job. Of course they want to get reelected. So they need to know, does this really matter to people?
00:36:36
Speaker
And when we hit the little auto button that sends them a form letter, that doesn't tell them anything. I've hit that button many times in the sort of earlier incarnations of myself, and I had no idea what happened on that issue.
00:36:50
Speaker
I couldn't have told you. you know what happened, how my legislator voted, what happened. What they need to know is, do you care enough to make time to follow this issue? Is this important enough to you that it really is going and to make a difference in your life, in your community's life? You're going to talk about it. And that's where the phone calls, the personalized direct emails, and yes, showing up in person when you can. But even if you can't show up in person, I know a lot of people can't,
00:37:17
Speaker
I have seen the difference a handful of phone calls can make on legislators' positions over and over and over.
00:37:27
Speaker
It doesn't take tens of thousands of people on our issues. Now, abortion, gun rights, taxes, yeah, you need a lot bigger numbers.
00:37:38
Speaker
On our issues, if you can get a dozen people in your community to make calls with you to your congressman, you're going to have an impact. That's a very, very hopeful message.
00:37:51
Speaker
I love it. To close us off, I mean, obviously we've talked about, you know, the farm bill, some very large structural problems. Working with, you know, so many farmers, especially in Texas, you know, what gives you hope in this moment?
00:38:08
Speaker
Depends which day you catch me on. I think I would talk more about determination than hope because the reality is we have to change our food system.
00:38:19
Speaker
There really isn't another option. As long as our food system is being driven by corporate interests that are looking at short-term profits as the top priority, the future is horrifically bleak.
00:38:34
Speaker
We want our kids to be healthy. We want... us, you know, like the adults to be healthy. We want to be able to be able to raise food and not have people face short significant shortages in 20 or 30 or 40 years. And we are running that clock, folks.
00:38:50
Speaker
I realize you asked about hope, so I'm sorry, but this this is this is, you caught me today, and this is where I am today, which is we have got to change the food system. The other side of it is so good.
00:39:03
Speaker
And this is what got me into sustainable agriculture, because is thanks to the fact that we have the sun shining every day, even even on cloudy days, that the sun's there providing energy to our planet.
00:39:16
Speaker
And we have these amazing natural ecosystem processes that take that energy and turn it into plant life that nourishes animal life.
00:39:29
Speaker
ah We can have foods that is raised in ways that uses those natural processes, that uses that energy and creates this incredibly healthy food that is long-term sustainable, that nourishes our children without toxins, and everybody does better. And the rural communities are better off and the farmers are better off. And the only people who lose are the shareholders.
00:39:53
Speaker
And I really don't feel very sorry about that fact.
Progress Towards a Regenerative Food System
00:39:56
Speaker
So I will try to end on what makes me hopeful is this is something where we don't have to go to our elected officials and say, here's a trade-off.
00:40:06
Speaker
We want you to do X, but here's who loses out if you do it. Because it's not. It doesn't have to be a trade-off. Everybody truly can benefit from a regenerative, local, diversified food system.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I think more people are waking up to that. And more people are raising their voices about that. And I will go back to the specific Farm Bill thing. I mean, the incredibly strong bipartisan vote to strip out the pesticide manufacturer's shields.
00:40:36
Speaker
liability shield. That was one vote. I don't want to overstate, you know, like it's one vote, it's one issue. But I think it demonstrates how many more people are seeing the importance of these issues around our food, the value of looking for a better food system, and are starting to work to make that more of a ah reality on the ground and in our policy framework.
00:41:01
Speaker
That is ah an incredible way to end. And yeah, the vote against the pesticide liability is a very hopeful testament to the fact that we don't have to let corporations just run all over us and have complete immunity, which is obviously so egregious on the surface.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, I just wanted to end by saying thank you so much. And thank you for the important work that you and Farfa are doing, fighting for like the really important policy changes that need to happen. Because as I said in the beginning, you can't have a better food system without having a better policy framework surrounding it. yeah.
00:41:42
Speaker
Yeah, really appreciate the work that you guys are doing. i guess to end, you know, for anyone that is interested in understanding your work and how they can support, you know, what should they do or where should they go to follow along what you guys are doing?
00:41:59
Speaker
So our website is simply farmandranchfreedom.org and you can sign up for free email alerts. We'll ask you for your zip code so we can target it and help you find out what's happening with your legislators whenever there's key votes where, you know, there's a committee.
00:42:15
Speaker
farmandranchfreedom.org, sign up for email alerts, sign up as a member, and we'll have some additional links for taking action that I'll send over. Love it. Thank you so much.
00:42:25
Speaker
Thank you for having me on and for spreading the word about this. Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexander Miller, who also wrote our theme song. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment on your podcast app of choice.
00:42:40
Speaker
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