'Farm Aid' 2020: Warren, Sanders propose rescue plans for family farmers by realchriswilson
Presidential elections are decided by many things: media exposure, financial backing, personal chemistry, timing and luck. Policy positions often are just a way of signaling where a candidate stands on the political spectrum. But 2020 is shaping up to be different, the most ideas-driven election in recent American history. On the Democratic side, a robust debate about inequality has given rise to ambitious proposals to redress the imbalance in Americans’ economic situations.
Since 2003, the number of dairy herds in Wisconsin has been reduced by half. Milk prices are down 40 percent over the last five years as an increase in corporate farms and more efficient milking practices have flooded the market. Making matters worse are tariffs on American dairy products, responses to President Trump’s trade war that have made international sales more difficult. Last year, a Massachusetts dairy co-op included information on a suicide hotline with payment checks to farmers.
In the early 1900s, the government leaned on two key pieces of legislation to help loosen monopoly in agriculture, a series of antitrust laws and the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act, which helped hold meatpacking companies accountable to ranchers and farmers. Over the ensuing decades, enforcement waned, culminating in the Reagan administration’s position not to pursue antitrust violations unless consumer prices were affected.
The pitch helped Obama win the Iowa caucuses and jump start the campaign that would give him the nomination and eventually the White House. Members of his Cabinet, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, toured the country, hearing concerns of farmers, including some who risked alienating the sole buyer in their region by speaking out about the power of big agribusiness.
He wants to strengthen rules on organic growing and labeling that are threatened by the Trump administration. The Sanders plan also called for enacting New Deal-style programs to regulate supply and demand of agricultural commodities and national grain and feed reserves that could be tapped in case of crop failures.
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