Purchases

Republican policy this term has been a frontal assault on American agriculture by cutting the demand for our farmers’ products. Republicans have cut SNAP by about $18 billion per year, meaning the government will not help hungry families buy that amount of food. USAID, which provided food assistance to the hungry overseas, also bought $2 billion worth of US food each year. Meanwhile Trump’s trade war has caused China to cut off imports of US agriculture products by half, another $15 billion annual loss for farmers. To offset the damage, Republicans committed to giving American farmers about $10 billion/year. Not only is it not enough to cover the damage of their policies, but in effect they are paying farmers to NOT feed the people that were eating the food before.

Intellectual Property

While the recent harms are important and should be reversed, they compound the long-time problems US farmers have been facing. The harassment of farmers who don’t even use a companies patented seeds or being forbidden from repairing their own vehicles and machines are examples of how IP law has overly favored big agriculture companies. Reform of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 is complicated because it is codified into several international treaties, and thus requires some international coordination to alter. But something immediately possible is right-to-repair legislation, which I would support. Right-to-repair forces manufacturers to provide access to the software and tools necessary to repair their products so owners can repair it themselves. Six states have passed right-to-repair, but 5 of them exempted farm equipment, and Missouri's state legislature has voted against any right-to-repair at all. I would reintroduce the Agricultural Right to Repair Act to overrule these state-based exemptions that are effectively giveaways to big Ag.

Subsidized transitions

Other national democrats have introduced legislation to assist farmers that want to transition their farming practices. This includes transitioning CAFOs to pasture-based livestock farms, changing manure management practices and implementing some climate change agricultural projects. The important thing to me is that the bill offers economic offsets to pay for voluntary change instead of forcing an economic cost on the farmers. If the economic incentives make sense for them; great! If not, then they aren't forced to change.

My Focus

As clean energy subsidies and environmental regulations made coal no longer profitable, it caused significant damage to the economy of West Virginia. I worry about similar consequences for Missouri’s farmers being pushed past an economic breaking point by policies aimed at non-agriculture related goals. For that reason, my focus is on shielding farmers from paying the economic cost of our national strategy, and these policies do that. The difference is this; we want to support the industry that feeds people at home and as a tool of national policy abroad. They are using the withholding of food as their tool. When our leaders don't want to feed people, they don't think about how their policies will affect the ones that do the feeding. It's simple as that.