Last week, MRCC farmer members, Darvin Bentlage and Noah Earle, traveled with other members of the Campaign for Family Farms & the Environment to Washington D.C. to talk to our elected representatives about the situation facing Missourians and our food system, the 2023 Farm Bill and the policy solutions they need to champion and pass to alleviate the negative impacts of corporate control.
We need Congress to break up the meatpacking giants, by passing legislation that…
–>Enacts a moratorium on new mergers of large agriculture and food retailers; and,
–>Reviews and breaks up past mergers that have created extreme consolidation in food and agriculture markets.
We need Congress to pass Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) to support U.S. family farmers and allow consumers to 1) know if meat is imported, and 2) choose meat born, raised and processed in the U.S.
We need Congress to modernize our system of grain production through commodity price floors, loan rates, grain reserves and set aside programs to ensure family farm grain producers get paid a fair price from the market and stop the vicious cycle of overproduction of grains that intentionally provides cheap, subsidized feed to corporate factory farms.
There is no one “silver bullet” to solve the current challenges we have in our farm and food system, and MRCC is at the forefront demanding the changes we need to create a more democratically controlled, decentralized system of agriculture and food production.
