Missourians need to make voices heard about future of farm and food system

By TIM GIBBONS
The Missouri Independent

Missouri Rural Crisis Center recently sent in comments to the Biden Administration and USDA in response to their request for comments to “improve and reimagine the supply chains for the production, processing and distribution of agricultural commodities and food products.”

Now is the time to move forward with policies that create a fairer, and more resilient and sustainable food system.

With recent disruptions in our food system, from a global pandemic that closed mega-processing plants and endangered workers and our national security, to a cyberattack on the world’s biggest meatpacker, it’s time to create policies toward a more localized, decentralized, democratic food system based on independent family farms and consumers, not global corporate agri-business.

It’s not hyperbole to say our national and food security and the vitality of our independent family farms and rural economies are at risk; and, we must also ask ourselves the broader questions about who and what does our democratic process support and represent.

Corporate monopolistic control of our farm and food system is a “house of cards” that has shown its instability, undermining our national security, and exploiting family farmers, workers and rural communities across our country. Over the last three decades, factory farm corporations (the biggest now owned by foreign corporations with ties to foreign governments) have put hundreds of thousands of independent family farmers out of business—which resulted in putting thousands of local, independently owned businesses on our Main Streets out of business.

This has severely impacted our ability to feed our families regionally and locally, and is also extracting huge amounts of wealth from our communities.