About | Missouri Rural Crisis Center

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Our Story

The Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC) is a statewide farm and rural membership organization founded in 1985 with over 5600 member families. The Missouri Rural Crisis Center started with a $10,000 grant from the first Farm Aid fundraising concert held in 1985 in Champaign, IL. It started with the ideals of supporting independent family farmers and rural communities. While the challenges farm families and rural people are facing have changed over the last 35 years, MRCC continues to organize to preserve family farms and independent family farm livestock production, prevent environmental degradation, promote stewardship of the land and a safe, affordable high- quality food supply, create affordable and accessible healthcare systems and defend justice and economic opportunity for both rural and urban communities.

Agriculture in this country is made up of hundreds of thousands of family farms, yet government policies are generally written by and for a few corporate agribusinesses.

Instead, Missourians want the decisions made about their food by family farmers living on the land and consumers, not by corporate executives in board rooms thousands of miles away.

One of the most important environmental, economic and social issues confronting agricultural communities is the future structure and practices of the livestock industry. The issue is whether livestock will be dispersed across the countryside on a variety of farms typified by local family ownership managing diversified farm operations, or produced in large, energy and capital-intensive confinement facilities that concentrate the animals and their wastes in vast quantities and concentrate economic wealth and control in the hands of absentee investors and unaccountable elected representatives. At stake is the future of large parts of America’s rural environment, the health and prosperity of rural communities, economic opportunity for farm and rural families, and far-reaching questions about food access, safety, and affordability and our democracy.

MRCC’s Mission and Vision

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MRCC Mission

preserve family farms,
promote stewardship of the land and environmental integrity,
strive for economic and social justice by building unity and mutual understanding among diverse groups, both rural and urban.

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MRCC's innovative approach to family farm organizing:

challenging corporate control of the food supply,
creating alternatives to the corporatized farm and food system,
generating community participation to create a just, democratic society based on equity and fairness for all people.

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Every day MRCC fights:

support an independent family farm system of agriculture,
to prevent environmental degradation,
to support social justice and economic opportunity,
to encourage efforts that promote stewardship of the land and a safe, affordable high-quality food supply,
to play a leadership role in national and international efforts for fair farm and trade policies,
to establish a mutual understanding between rural and urban communities.

All Missourians benefit from:

advocacy for wholesome, locally grown food from Missouri’s family farmers,
rural leadership to achieve strong rural economies and clean water and air,
agriculture policies that support independent family farms and rural economies,
empowerment of rural communities to challenge the power of big agribusiness.

Why Join MRCC’s Membership

MRCC is able to deliver meaningful victories because of the ability to call people to action. By joining MRCC, you are becoming part of the solution and investing in your future and the future of independent farmers and consumers across the country.