Corporate Farming

Consolidation in agriculture has been steadily increasing for decades, to the detriment of family and mid-size farms and ranches.

Here are some examples of our current and past work to combat consolidation and protect family farms and ranches. You may also be interested in our newsletter’s regular Corporate Farming Notes column. You can sign up for our newsletter here.

From the archives:

For more articles, check out our Corporate Farming News or browse the feed below. 

Corporate Farming Notes

 

Farm Bill Priorities

Agriculture remains an important source of economic opportunity for people in rural areas.

Learn more about our farm bill priorities. We believe the farm bill can support small towns through crop insurance reform, conservation, beginning farmers, and rural development.

Pass a new farm bill before the existing one expires on Sept. 30, 2018.

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Corporate farming notes

By Brian Depew on June 30, 2020 - 8:30am

Bayer, maker of the widely used herbicide Roundup, will pay $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims filed by consumers alleging a link between their use of Roundup and their cancer, most notably non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Claimants will receive between $5,000 and $250,000 each, depending on the strength of their case. The company admits no wrongdoing in the settlement.

What about our farmers?

By Johnathan Hladik on November 8, 2019 - 9:00am

Earlier this year, in the midst of a trade war with China, President Donald Trump announced a $16 billion agriculture bailout, telling Americans, via Twitter, the biggest beneficiaries would be “our great Patriot Farmers.”

Recent news reports, however, indicate foreign companies are getting a substantial amount of the bailout dollars.

From the desk of our executive director: Get big or get out, a redux

By Brian Depew on October 23, 2019 - 9:00am

Asked about the plight of dairy farmers in Wisconsin, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said, “[The] big get bigger and small go out and that’s kind of what we’ve seen here...

Everyone will have to make their own decisions economically whether they can survive.”

The Center for Rural Affairs was founded in 1973. Earl Butz was Secretary of Agriculture. Butz had a similar view, “Get big or get out.”

Butz believed farm consolidation was inevitable.

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