Think small

Farmers to DOJ -- "Break up Big Ag"

While farmers were the star of the show at last Friday's antitrust hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the debate over the monopolization of farming is one where all of our interests are squarely at stake.


Anyone who eats and has a brain should be downright terrified that just a few giant businesses control the vast majority of food available to us as consumers. Perhaps that explains why more than 15,000 people submitted comments in anticipation of the hearings - four more of which are scheduled this year as a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.


Patrick Woodall, a research director for Food and Water Watch, and a panelist at the hearings said, "At the end of the day, farmers and activists could speak truth to power and delivered a tough message to the regulators that action was long overdue, it was time to bust the agribusiness trusts and level the playing field for farmers and consumers. Many audience members, like Marcia Ishii-Eiteman from Pesticide Action Network North America, also challenged the reliance on agrochemical inputs and the false hope of genetically modified crops."


U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, "This is not just about farmers and ranchers. It's really about the survival of rural America."


He's right, of course, but that's not just some romantic Rockwellesque notion; almost anyone who eats depends on a shrinking number of farmers struggling at the other end of our fork. If they disappear, our freedom to eat what we choose will vanish as well.

Support your local farmer....your local farmer's market...grow your own.