The Rural Vote: Does the food industry need more competition? Will farmers vote their interests? Are taxpayer-paid subsidies better than competition and growing markets?
Jerry Hagstrom reports for the National Journal. “Representatives of Vice President Harris and former President Trump debated about their agricultural platforms at a Farm Foundation event this week, but there may be bigger news about agriculture and rural America in the campaigns, Jerry Hagstrom” reports:
Farm/Rural Debaters were:
- Rod Snyder, former director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Agriculture and Rural Affairs until his resignation in August, represented Harris-Walz.
- Kip Tom, an Indiana farmer who was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations food and agriculture organizations in Rome, is now co-lead of the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump Coalition, representing the former president.
Key Points:
TARIFFS
Snyder/Harris-Walz: When Trump’s tariffs led to reduced farm exports, the Agriculture Department made $23 billion in taxpayer-funded payments to farmers
Tom/Trump: “he’ll take care of us this time, too.”
MY RURAL AMERICA: Trump wants taxpayers to fund additional payments to farmers who lose their markets due to Trump’s new tariffs. Tariffs are taxes.
SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (SNAP)
Tom/Trump: Too much fraud and abuse
Snyder/Harris-Walz: Fraud already addressed.
MY RURAL AMERICA: Republicans want to cut food assistance. Cutting food assistance is cutting farmer’s markets, and farmers will take it in the chin again.
FOOD PRICE GOUGING
Snyder/Harris-Walz: “Harris has not proposed food-price caps but wants to give the Federal Trade Commission more power to address the impact of agribusiness concentration.”
Tom/Trump: “There is ‘no monopoly’ in food production.”
MY RURAL AMERICA: Dear Reader, count for your self:
- FOUR — Tyson, Cargill, and Brazil-based National Beef and JBS, now control 85% of the U.S. beef market. WH Group (Chinese), JBS, Hormel, and Tyson control about 67% of the pork market. Tyson and Pilgrims Pride control about 45% of the chicken market.
- FOUR — The Guardian and Food and Water Watch investigation into 61 popular grocery items reveals that the top companies control an average of 64% of sales. For 85% of the groceries analyzed, four firms or fewer controlled more than 40% of the market share.
- It’s widely agreed that consumers, farmers, small food companies and the planet lose out if the top four firms control 40% or more of total sales.
Republican-sponsored PROJECT 2025
Snyder/Harris-Walz: “Heritage Foundation-organized plan for the next GOP administration that includes an end to most farm subsidies and trade-promotion programs is ‘really concerning.'”
Tom/Trump: “Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025.”
MY RURAL AMERICA: Reportedly, 13 Trump staffers worked inside the walls of the Heritage Foundation to write Project 2025 with the help of the Foundation. Project 2025 was intended to be Trump’s transition plan once he was elected, but it was not supposed to be leaked. Once the 887 pages were leaked, Trump has denied it.
“Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz campaign has hired as rural-outreach director Matt Hildreth of Rural Organizing. The organization’s website states that “grassroots organizing won” the Ohio referendum that kept abortion legal because “many voters crossed party lines in significant numbers to protect abortion access.” Hildreth is likely to focus on getting rural women out to vote. But after the football players Walz coached appeared with him at the Democratic convention, one farm lobbyist said that the players’ backing may give “fence-sitter” farmers “safe ground” to vote for Harris and Walz so “they don’t have to explain to their wives why they voted for Trump.”