BILL: Should We Protect Small-Scale Farmers? - Fairness for Small-Scale Farmers and Ranchers Act - S.2670
Tell your reps to support or oppose this bill
The Bill
S.2670 - Fairness for Small-Scale Farmers and Ranchers Act
Bill Details
- Sponsored by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) on July 27, 2023
- Co-sponsored by Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
- Committee: Senate - Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
- House: Not yet voted
- Senate: Not yet voted
- President: Not yet signed
Bill Overview
- Re-establishes an agricultural system that works for small farmers by halting mergers of big agriculture businesses. These mergers have negatively impacted the livelihood of small-scale farmers and ranchers. The moratorium will last until the problem of market consolidation is addressed through comprehensive legislation.
- Requires the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to consider whether to unwind mergers if they are determined to have materially harmed competition nationally or in local markets, farmers or ranchers, workers, or consumers.
- Strengthens antitrust laws across the agricultural sector.
- Restores mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirements for beef and pork products.
What's in the Bill
Supports family farms
- Protects and promotes family businesses from takeovers and encroachments by big agribusinesses.
- Extends funding for Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP), a one-stop-shop at USDA that makes it easier for farmers to receive support for local and regional food projects.
- Authorizes $100 million over five years for outreach programs and assistance to new, retiring, and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.
Offers more consumer choice
- Promotes more meaningful consumer choices by promoting smaller farmers, niche agricultural products, and organic alternatives.
Supports ranchers
- Forbids certain practices in livestock buying and selling. These include contracts without a firm base price.
- Protects small farmers and ranchers from retaliation. Requires the USDA to crack down on unfair and anti-competitive business practices from large meat and poultry processors.
- Frees up USDA Rural Development grants to fund small meat processing facilities.
What Supporters Are Saying
“The wellbeing and vitality of farms across America is under threat from big corporations and farm consolidation. We can’t let that happen.”
“Our food system used to work better – everyday consumers saw lower prices, and small farmers and ranchers were taken care of. But in the last few decades, there’s been a huge concentration of power amongst the biggest companies, who are making enormous profits at the expense of workers, local farmers, ranchers, and consumers."
“Lack of competition has corrupted the entire food supply chain: from seed and fertilizer production to big agribusinesses that drive out small family farms and force workers to endure egregious conditions. This is unacceptable. We must reverse these disturbing trends and cultivate a food and farm system that works for everyone.”
- It is endorsed by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Farm Action Fund, Farm Aid, National Education Association, National Family Farm Coalition, National Farmers Union, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, among others.
What Opponents Are Saying
- Ted Nordhaus, co-author of An Ecomodernist Manifesto, wrote in Foreign Policy:
"Dependence on large farms is not a conspiracy by big corporations. Without question, the U.S. food system has many problems. But persistent misperceptions about it, most especially among affluent consumers, are a function of its spectacular success, not its failure.
Any effort to address social and environmental problems associated with food production in the United States will need to first accommodate itself to the reality that, in a modern and affluent economy, the food system could not be anything other than large-scale, intensive, technological, and industrialized."
Tell your reps to support or oppose this bill
—Emma Kansiz
(Photo Credit: Canva)
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I lived most of my life in a farming state-Nebraska. I am sympathic to small farmers and know several people from farm families. It is difficult enough to be a small farmer and they need protection of the government from corporate take over and mergers.
Small farms and small businesses are the backbone of our society, our economy and jobs. Corporations are not, if they pay low wages, no benefits or retirement. Big agriculture doesn't want a fair farm bill !!!!!
Support our small farms and ranches it benefits us all.
I'd much rather see my tax dollars go towards helping a small farmer than giving it away to those big corporate farms where the only thing important is profit at all costs. Between poisoning land, air and water, animal cruelty, GMOs, underpaid laborers, Capitalism has destroyed the livelyhood of many a small farmers and the time has come for regulations on corporate farming. Let the "little man" earn a decent living. I want good food not some chemically treated crap that I don't know about. Anybody out there ever watched the movie "Solient Green"?
I am a Texan and for about 4 generations, my family has supported small farmers by leasing 5 different farmland to them. The farmlands are 300 to 1500 acres. They get between 70% of the revenues which helped them financially. All of these farmers have their own farmland but like ours smaller..so more they can farm, the better earning they get.
So please protect them and the landlaords as well.
We've already gotten offers from big businesses who want to buy up our farnland. I said no.
You have corporations buying up land, housing and any kind of real estate they can. Creating a shortage of land and housing. They come in and pay cash offers drive cost up as well. Creating slums lords rentals. Their are three main corporations that want to achieve 60% of ownerships of the housing industry in the United States by 2030! You have a referenced by RFK blackrock, Vanguard and state street are the main companies! I get about two or three calls a week to buy My home. They use everything thing from reverse mortgage or out right buying home!
Can we please stop subsidizing the meat & dairy industry, first?
Meat & dairy have been linked to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cancer-carcinogenicity-of-the-consumption-of-red-meat-and-processed-meat
Processed meat (lunch meat, pepperoni, etc.) is classified as a Group 1 carcinogenic...same category as cigarettes
Red meat is a Group 2 carcinogenic, with a strong link to colorectal cancer.
I won't even talk about cattle's involvement in global warming, which is worse than the car emissions!
"Milk and other dairy products are the top source of saturated fatin the American diet, contributing to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. Studies have also linked dairy to an increased risk of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers."
https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-about-dairy#
Small farms, especially those growing organic fresh fruits & vegetables should be subsidized.
Please stop subsidizing foods that are literally killing us!!!
Senators and Representatives:
Yes, I stringly support legislation that protects and regulates the farming industry both small farms and ranches and large.
First. Setting aside exports, we need to feed something closing in on 333,000,000 million people.
We clearly need large scale agriculture but given its corporate record, we need to pull the reigns on this out-of-control industry ASAP
Third, We also need the small farmers and ranchers, but they too need monitoring. Things like organically grown tend to have high prices that are unaffordable for many of out fellow citizens and those same prices take up a sizeable chunk of the budgets of many who simply assume truth in labeling.
Fourth. Under the prior pro-corporate administration lead by the most corrupt president in the history of this country, we lost much of the monitoring we used to have. We need to restore these cutbacks and increase and improve the monitoring and regulation. We also need to restore confidence in these agencies.
Fifth. We are seeing that effects of Climate Change we were warned about for almost a century arebreal and devastating. In prioritizing our efforts in dealing with Climate Change, we must carefully protect our the entire farming and ranch industries now!
So, yes, lets start by protecting and regulating our small farmers and ranchers but we can not and must not stop there.
I would much rather support and send money to small farmers than corporate agriculture.
I support this.
90% of US farms are small farms but less than 20% of produce is from these farms and they rely on off farm income but they grow a wider variety of crops contributing to agrobiodiversity.
Without these farms we will rely on agribusiness, what they choose to produce, how they choose to produce it with heavy equipment, genetically modified seeds, and toxic fertilizers to achieve profitability. They will also consolidate food supply companies thereby controlling supply hence prices and profitability as we have already seen in milk, dairy, egg, etc pricing that has been inflationary.
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/food-inflation-in-the-united-states/
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20220119/114345/HHRG-117-JU05-20220119-SD006.pdf
https://royalexaminer.com/why-small-farms-make-a-big-difference/
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/
Definitely.
Industrial scale agriculture too often relies on the use of toxic and destructive practices. Over-use and abuse of chemical pesticides and fertilizers are killing our lakes. That is true of some large lakes like Lake Erie.
Balance with nature and organic practices are the better way.
Yes, we should support small scale farmers/family farms, but I do not condone giving away millions of dollars to big corporate farms. In fact, I pretty much hold a negative opinion of corporate farms-they essentially rape the land and put profits beefore the welfare of the land and animals in their possession.