Rep. Marcia Fudge had lost her patience with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue by February 2019. At a hearing nearly two years earlier, in May 2017, the Ohio Democrat had let Perdue go on at length describing his goals for reorganizing the Department of Agriculture. Running it like a corporate CEO would bring better results to rural America, he’d said.
As Biden forms his cabinet and prepares to govern, a new paper, commissioned by the Farm Action Fund Alliance, makes a strong case that Big Ag consolidation actually harms working-class and farmer livelihoods in rural areas.
The agriculture industry, which has weathered economic blows over recent years from the coronavirus pandemic and trade wars, needs “a new vision,” said Joe Maxwell, a lifelong farmer and president of Farm Action Fund.
As the Biden-Harris transition pushes forward, without cooperation from the defeated incumbent, speculation is swirling over future leadership of the US Department of Agriculture, which executes food and farm policy.
Progressives within agriculture are mounting an aggressive push to keep former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp from being selected to serve as Agriculture Secretary in a Biden administration.
Wisconsin dairy farmer Sarah Lloyd believes she has the answer to a question that has convulsed the Democratic Party for the past four years. “People from the coasts are always like, ‘What’s going on with Wisconsin? How could they have possibly voted for Obama and then voted for Trump?’”
Political conventions traditionally feature an orgy of corporate lobbyists and big money courting public officials. You’d think such displays wouldn’t factor into a convention-at-home setup in 2020. After all, where would the lobbyists and hangers-on congregate? The answer is, apparently, on Zoom.
The rally on Saturday brought farmers from different states, regions and even political parties together for one goal, change.
Farm Action Fund has sent a letter to every member of the Missouri House of Representatives, encouraging them to sign on as a co-sponsor to legislation banning the foreign ownership of farmland in Missouri.
64 separate groups concerned with how food is produced issued a letter demanding that these proposals be stopped. “We feel that this bill puts us under attack,” says Chelsea Davis, the communications director for Farm Action Fund, a group dedicated to fighting for the rights of small farmers and rural communities. “It wipes out the state’s ability to control what’s best for the state.”