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America Works Best When We the People Are in Charge
When ordinary people organize, mobilize, and refuse to accept the dictates of an elite few, America moves forward.
Jul 03, 2026
Two hundred fifty years ago, Americans rejected monarchy. They rejected the idea that power should rest in the hands of one person, one family, or a distant ruling class. Instead, they enshrined an American promise: Legitimate power comes from the people.
Our Constitution opens with three words: “We the People.” As the country marks its 250th anniversary, that promise is worth remembering: In America, the people are supposed to be in charge.
Indeed, every day we see neighbors working together to improve their lives, their communities, and the country.
Earlier this year, hundreds of residents of San Marcos, Texas, packed into public meetings with concerns about a new data center. The Caldwell/Hays Examiner, a local paper, summarized the sentiment: “Electricity bills may soon spike while access to clean water diminishes drastically, given the unfathomably giant data center on its way.”
Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?
The local government rejected the unpopular project, and similar efforts are taking place across the country. In every place the message is clear: The people who live there, not a distant tech company, should be in charge of the community’s resources.
Rural communities are also taking on Big Ag. For example, Grassroots Organizing of Western Wisconsin brought residents together and passed local safeguards that limit threats from factory farms and support family farmers, clean water, and local infrastructure.
Iowans won a big victory against a global pesticide manufacturer. Knowing their state’s unusually high cancer rates, Iowa Farmers Union mobilized from the bottom up and blocked a law that would have shielded a billion-dollar corporation from accountability.
These patriotic efforts help fulfill the promise of “We the People.” They also show what’s possible when people come together to shape the decisions that affect our lives.
Unfortunately, few Americans feel in control right now. We face an unpredictable economy, cuts to healthcare, cruel and reckless Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, and attacks on mail-in ballots. Even that recent win in Iowa is in jeopardy—the Supreme Court just shielded the pesticide company from thousands of lawsuits brought by farmers and families who blame Roundup for their cancer.
These are all symptoms of a single disease: a nation where too much power rests with an elite few rather than with ordinary Americans. That’s exactly what researchers at Topos Partnership found. After listening to nearly 5,000 Americans, we heard one idea emerge: The people are supposed to be in charge.
The real story isn’t Democrats versus Republicans, or newcomers versus citizens, or some fabricated clash of civilizations. The real story—the one that unifies and energizes—is about who decides. Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?
Most Americans in our research recognize that the answer to that question is complicated, but also that being reminded of our defining story could help heal a fractured nation. As one moderate Colorado man expressed: “When everyday people don’t feel in charge, it creates anger, frustration, bitterness. But when everyday people feel like they’re having an impact, it creates a sense of belonging.”
When ordinary people organize, mobilize, and refuse to accept the dictates of an elite few, America moves forward. We’ve seen it in workers establishing safer workplaces and the civil rights movement expanding “who counts” in our country. We decided our nation belonged to us—and acted like it.
Let America’s history and recent successes be the inspiration. This July 4, the most patriotic thing we can do is remember whose hands this country is supposed to be in: ours. When we come together, the people are in charge.
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'This Is War Profiteering': Fertilizer Giants See Fortunes Boom as Trump Militarism, Tariffs Hurt Farmers
"While a few agrochemical giants shamelessly reap bumper profits, farmers are watching their livelihoods wither on the vine," said one Greenpeace campaigner.
May 13, 2026
Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday underscored how the US-Israeli war on Iran and Trump administration trade policies are hurting farmers and consumers while Big Ag profits from fast-rising fertilizer and food prices.
President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 30% of the world's fertilizer and 20% of its oil previously passed. In addition to increasing the risk of a global food crisis, the strait's closure has sent fuel and fertilizer prices soaring, with US farm diesel costing nearly 50% more than it did on the war's eve in February and nitrogen fertilizer rising by a similar percentage.
Meanwhile, Trump's erratic tariff war has further squeezed farmers and consumers. Tariffs have increased short-term prices, market volatility, and farmer costs while temporarily reducing import flows.
Vermont farmers "are footing the bill for Trump's reckless war in Iran," Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) said Wednesday on social media. "Fuel and fertilizer costs are surging right amid planting season, hitting family farms that are already stretched thin. This needs to end."
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) said on X that "food prices are skyrocketing because 70% of farmers can't afford fertilizer, due to Trump's reckless Iran War," adding that "perhaps Trump should help them out by lending some, given that he's full of crap."
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) noted Tuesday on Bluesky that "Minnesota’s farmers are dealing with tariffs, high fertilizer costs, expensive feed, and exorbitant fuel prices," while Trump is "planning to lay off dozens" of US Department of Agriculture workers "who help farmers protect their land and water."
The lawmakers' posts followed Tuesday's US Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on fertilizer market challenges, during which members of the Republican majority spoke vaguely of "trade disputes" and the "recent conflict in the Middle East" without naming names.
When it was her turn to speak, Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) noted the "direct link" between the soaring price of nitrogen fertilizer components and Trump's actions.
"In the months since the president started the war, with no consultation or authorization from Congress... urea has spiked more than 40%, the cost of diesel has hit near record highs in Midwest states," she said. "Now, why? Well, nearly half of the global urea goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Thirty percent of ammonia goes through the Strait of Hormuz."
Farmers are facing fertilizer prices that are through the roof because of the across-the-board tariffs, market consolidation, and uncertainties stemming from a war in Iran that was started with no consultation or authorization from Congress.
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— Senator Amy Klobuchar (@klobuchar.senate.gov) May 12, 2026 at 5:51 PM
"Yet, even before the war, farmers were walloped by the presence of across-the-board tariffs," Klobuchar continued. "An analysis by North Dakota State University... found that [International Emergency Economic Powers Act] tariffs added nearly $1 billion in costs to critical inputs like fertilizer, seed, machinery, and chemicals from February through October of last year."
"Acting now will ultimately help stabilize prices and give farmers the certainty they need," the senator added. "But it is going to have to be a combination of things: ending the tariffs, or reducing them, or making them much more targeted; ending this war; finding a way to resolve it, so the Strait of Hormuz is open again; and then going at this long-term systemic problem about the lack of competition in this area."
According to the advocacy group Farm Action, a handful of companies—primarily Nutrien, Mosaic, and CF Industries—dominate the North American fertilizer market, operating as an oligopoly that controls over 90% of nitrogen and potash production. Saskatchewan-based Nutrien, the world's leading potash producer, last week reported net first-quarter earnings of $139 million, up from $19 million one year ago.
"Fertilizer companies raise their prices because they can, and that's the market power that they have," Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said during Tuesday's hearing.
Noting record gains reaped amid the tumult of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Smith said that during 2021-22, "the nine largest fertilizer companies made an estimated $84 billion in profits."
"In 2022, major fertilizer companies saw profits increase somewhere between 100 and 200%," she continued. "Their input costs did not go up by that much... How much do you think the profits of the average farmer in South Dakota [went] up during that time period?"
Pointing to new reports of robust fertilizer industry profits, South Dakota Corn Farmers president Trent Kubik replied, "during these last 75 days, a lot of money was being made, but it wasn't by farmers."
Addressing the question of "what can we do to change the behavior of companies that are in a position where they can charge such high prices and get such exorbitant profits," Smith suggested considering a "windfall profits tax" to "make the market more fair, particularly for folks that are doing the work."
The Trump administration's plan to counter high fertilizer prices includes reopening the Biden-era Fertilizer Production Expansion Program, which provides grants and financing to build or expand domestic manufacturing capacity. Some critics have slammed the program as a form of corporate welfare.
The administration is also considering further expanding a multibillion-dollar bailout program, which critics say has mainly benefited large-scale, export-oriented commodity farms.
Responding to recent reports of strong profits for nitrogen fertilizer producers, Greenpeace Aotearoa (New Zealand) Big Ag project lead Amanda Larsson said Tuesday that “the illegal US-Israeli attack on Iran has sent global fertilizer prices soaring, and while a few agrochemical giants shamelessly reap bumper profits, farmers are watching their livelihoods wither on the vine."
"This is war profiteering facilitated by a broken, fossil fuel-dependent food system—with farmers and consumers paying the price," she continued.
“Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer causes water and climate pollution, while propping up a system of industrial over-production, particularly to produce monoculture feed crops for livestock," Larsson said. "We are sacrificing our rivers, our climate, and our financial security to prop up a system that serves billionaires, not communities."
“We cannot buy food security on a volatile global chemical market," she added. "The only path to true food sovereignty and resilience is through a transition to ecological farming. By moving away from synthetic fertilizers and toward diverse, nature-based practices, we can break the cycle of chemical dependence, protect our water, and ensure that the price of food is no longer dictated by the whims of war and corporate greed.”
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The Farm Bill’s 'Save Our Bacon' Provision Attacks State's Rights and Voters
Democrats and Republicans who claim to respect states’ rights should reject this federal power grab and defend the voters, farmers, and small businesses who have already moved forward.
May 13, 2026
Congress has a choice to make: Protect democracy and states’ rights, or hand a blank check to Big Pork lobbyists who refuse to accept that voters, family farmers, and the marketplace have already moved on.
Buried in the House-passed Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (Farm Bill) is a provision known as the “Save Our Bacon Act,” a slickly named attempt to wipe out state farm animal welfare laws like California’s Proposition 12. The House passed the farm bill on April 30 by a vote of 224-200, after the Rules Committee blocked a bipartisan amendment that had the votes to pass on the floor that would have stripped the Save Our Bacon language from the bill.
Now the fight moves to the Senate. And every Democrat and Republican who claims to respect states’ rights should be on notice: This provision is not about saving bacon. It is about overriding voters, punishing family farmers who adapted, and using federal power to erase state laws that powerful corporate interests dislike.
Proposition 12 was passed by nearly 63% of California voters in 2018. At its core, the law set a basic standard for certain animal products sold in California, including pork: A mother pig should have enough space to stand up, turn around, and extend her limbs. That is not radical. It is the bare minimum.
The message should be simple: Respect the voters, respect the farmers, respect the courts, and keep this attack on states’ rights out of the Farm Bill.
The pork lobby sued anyway, arguing that California had no right to decide what products could be sold within its own borders. They took that argument all the way to the US Supreme Court—and lost, even before a conservative court. In 2023, the court upheld Prop 12.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and its allies went to Congress and asked lawmakers to do what the courts would not: nullify the will of voters through federal legislation. The Farm Bill is their latest vehicle to pass the Save Our Bacon Act.
Supporters dress this up as a defense of interstate commerce. But let’s be honest about what it really is: a federal override of state decision-making.
That should alarm conservatives who believe Washington should not dictate every policy choice from the top down. It should alarm progressives who believe voters have the right to pass laws protecting animals, consumers, workers, and communities. And it should alarm anyone who thinks Congress should be solving actual problems in the farm bill—not sneaking in special favors for a trade group that lost in court, lost at the ballot box, and is now trying to win through backroom legislative maneuvering.
The irony is that Prop 12 has not caused the collapse its opponents predicted. Pork has remained on California shelves. Major producers have adapted. Nearly all major food companies now offer Prop 12-compliant pork. Many farmers invested in compliant systems and rely on the market that Prop 12 created.
In fact, some of the loudest claims against Prop 12 have aged terribly. The NPPC’s own vice president testified before Congress while describing himself as a fourth-generation hog farmer who produces Prop 12-compliant pork—then argued against the very law he already follows. That contradiction says everything. Compliance is possible. The industry knows it. The marketplace has shown it.
The people who stand to lose from the Save Our Bacon Act are not the multinational corporations that have already adjusted. They are the family farmers who spent money to meet higher standards, the small and mid-sized producers who gained access to premium markets, and the voters whose laws would be wiped away because a lobby did not like the outcome.
This is why opposition to the provision has not fallen neatly along party lines. A bipartisan group led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, sought to remove the language from the Farm Bill, joined by Republicans and Democrats including Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Mike Lawler, (R-NY), and Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), according to industry reporting.
That bipartisan resistance matters. It shows this is not a left-versus-right issue. It is a question of whether Congress will respect state authority or gut it when a powerful industry lobby complains loudly enough.
For Democrats, the choice should be easy. Prop 12 reflects humane treatment, consumer transparency, and democratic accountability. It was passed by voters and upheld by the courts. A farm bill should not become a vehicle for rolling back animal welfare progress and silencing state-level reform.
For Republicans, the choice should be just as easy—at least for those who mean what they say about states’ rights. If California voters cannot decide that pork sold in California must meet basic animal welfare and food safety standards, then what exactly does “states’ rights” mean? Does it only apply when a state passes laws that corporate lobbyists like?
The Save Our Bacon Act is also a warning shot far beyond animal welfare. If Congress can erase state laws protecting farm animals because they affect interstate commerce, what stops future Congresses from targeting state laws on food safety, environmental protection, public health, labeling, or consumer standards? Opponents have warned that this kind of language could threaten hundreds of state agricultural laws and undermine state and local authority well beyond Prop 12.
That is why lawmakers should strip this language from any final farm bill.
The farm bill should support farmers, strengthen food systems, expand nutrition access, invest in conservation, and build resilience. It should not be hijacked by a narrow industry faction trying to relitigate a Supreme Court loss. And it certainly should not punish the farmers and companies that did the right thing by adapting to higher standards.
Animal welfare progress is real. Across the food system, companies, producers, and consumers are moving toward more humane practices. Cage-free eggs now make up a major and growing share of the market. In pork production, many supply chains have reduced or eliminated gestation stalls. The trend is clear: Extreme confinement is becoming harder to defend and easier to replace.
The progress did not happen by accident. It happened because voters demanded it, farmers built it, companies responded to it, and advocates kept pushing. The Save Our Bacon Act would turn back the clock—not because the system failed, but because it succeeded.
Congress should not reward obstruction. It should not let Big Pork use the farm bill to override voters. And it should not allow a fake “states’ rights” argument to become a federal power grab against the states that actually exercised their rights.
Democrats and Republicans who genuinely believe in democracy, federalism, and fair markets should stand together and reject the Farm Bill if it includes the Save Our Bacon Act language.
The message should be simple: Respect the voters, respect the farmers, respect the courts, and keep this attack on states’ rights out of the Farm Bill. Call your US senators today and tell them to oppose Big Pork’s attack on democracy and oppose any Farm Bill version with the "Save Our Bacon" language included.
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Our Global Food System Is on the Brink of Collapse
The impact on fuel prices due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is the canary in the agrifood coal mine.
Apr 17, 2026
What does Big Ag have to do with the Strait of Hormuz? A lot, actually, when you consider that almost every so-called efficiency that industrial agriculture relies on to operate flows through this waterway. And now it is closed, threatening global food security.
And what is the primary source of the problem? Our reliance on fossil fuels.
What do fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics have in common?
First of all, each is a leg of the stool that makes up the rickety foundation of our global agrifood system.
Plastics are involved in every stage of our food and farming systems from soil to spoon: plastic polymers are used in some mulches, agrichemical containers are generally made of plastics, harvest crates and produce packages are often plastic, most processed foods are packaged in plastic or plastic-lined containers, and single-use plastics are still widely used in plates, bowls, cups, straws, napkins, and utensils.
In the 1960s, the world used between 60 and 70 million tonnes of fertilizer (synthetic nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, plus organic nitrogen) per year. But that usage has steadily risen ever since: in 2023 we used nearly 183 million tonnes of fertilizer. This rise can be attributed in part to the rising needs of a growing global population, but it is more indicative of our over-reliance on fertilizers as a way to combat the increasing effects of climate change. This season, farmers are already reporting untenable increases in fertilizer prices.
Big Ag has and will continue to rely on Big Oil to make Big Money as long as they can, but the United States’ and Israel’s unconstitutional war on Iran starkly illustrates just how fragile this house of cards is.
Pesticides are the other side of the agrichemical input coin. Fertilizers and pesticides go hand-in-hand, when it comes to global agrifood systems. The foundation of industrialized farming is monocropping (growing a single crop over and over on the same piece of land). The problem with monocropping is that it is extremely input intensive because monocropped land is more vulnerable to pest and disease pressure. And over time, this vulnerability increases, requiring more and more pesticides as tolerance builds. This creates a vicious cycle called the Pesticide Treadmill that is hard for farmers to escape without support.
But, critically, synthetic plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides are all derivatives of fossil fuels, mass quantities of which must be funneled through one waterway before becoming various inputs and components of our centralized, industrialized agrifood system. Rather than curbing our use of climate-harming fossil fuel-derived plastics, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, our agrifood systems use more and more each year, exacerbating the problem and further locking us into a fragile food system.
A Strait Chokepoint
According to the Congressional Research Service, over a quarter of the world’s supply of oil comes through the Strait of Hormuz, impacting farmers’ ability to get seeds in the ground and food to tables. Additionally, 20% of natural gas transits the Strait, which is a component of many agrichemical inputs. But, byproducts of oil and gas production also pass through the Strait, including helium which is used in semiconductor manufacturing (semiconductors like silicon are necessary for all modern technology), and urea, which is one of the most commonly used synthetic fertilizers. Over a third of the world’s urea must pass through the Strait.
In short, global agrifood systems rely intrinsically on fossil fuels and their byproducts to function, and when supply lines are disrupted, even briefly, the domino effects could be catastrophic. This article is not meant to be a metaphor, but an urgent warning and a window to our way out.
The most important—and maddening—thing to know is that our agrifood systems need not rely so heavily on fossil fuels and their byproducts to feed the world’s people.
Big Ag has and will continue to rely on Big Oil to make Big Money as long as they can, but the United States’ and Israel’s unconstitutional war on Iran starkly illustrates just how fragile this house of cards is. As countries around the world issue energy conservation mandates and brace for worsening inflation and supply chain instability, we should consider how agroecological farming practices could not only make our agrifood systems safer by reducing exposures of harmful pesticides and curb climate change, but also make the systems that feed us more resilient by decentralizing them, improving resilience to climate change-induced drought, floods, and pest pressures, and extricating them out from under the thumb of fossil fuel corporations.
Corporate greed has optimized humanity to the brink of mass starvation. But the principles of agroecology center food sovereignty (the opposite of corporate control), labor justice, and land stewardship.
Food systems grounded in agroecology are ones in which:
- All people have access to healthy, safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.
- Farmers and agricultural workers work with the land to protect, restore, and sustain natural resources and ecosystems.
- Agriculture utilizes ecological management practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improving adaptation and resilience to climate change.
- Synthetic chemical inputs are reduced or eliminated whenever possible.
- The production, sharing, commerce, and consumption of food is built on an economy which prioritizes thriving communities, resilient local markets, and worker rights.
- Diverse cultures, identities, and knowledge systems are embraced along with equitable forms of social organization.
- Power in food and farming systems is redistributed; shifting away from transnational corporations so that the rights of food producers, farm workers, and agricultural communities are centered.
These principles are not far fetched; they’re economically viable solutions that are being practiced successfully around the world already. Systemic shifts toward global agrifood systems that prioritize the principles of agroecology could help us to solve the triple planetary crises of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change.
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UN Report Estimates Bold Climate Action Would Deliver $100 Trillion in Benefits by 2100
"If we choose to stay on the current path—powering our economies with fossil fuels, extracting virgin resources, destroying nature, polluting the environment—the damages would stack up."
Dec 09, 2025
A new report from the United Nations Environment Program has found that addressing the global climate emergency would deliver major economic benefits, in addition to creating a cleaner and more habitable planet.
The seventh edition of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO), released on Tuesday, estimates that making up-front investments in climate action now would begin to yield global macroeconomic benefits starting in 2050, potentially growing to $20 trillion per year by 2070 and $100 trillion by 2100.
The report, which was the product of nearly 300 multi-disciplinary scientists across more than 80 countries, argues that a total of $8 trillion in annual investment from this year until 2050 would be needed to achieve its climate goals. But, the report stresses, the cost of inaction would be far greater.
"If we choose to stay on the current path—powering our economies with fossil fuels, extracting virgin resources, destroying nature, polluting the environment—the damages would stack up," the report warns. "Climate change would cut 4% off annual global GDP by 2050, claim many lives, and increase forced migration."
Other likely consequences of inaction, warns the report, include "Amazon forest dieback and ice-sheet collapse," along with the loss of "hundreds of millions more hectares of natural lands." The report also projects that global food availability will fall if the climate crisis is not addressed, and that increased air pollution will cause an additional 4 million premature deaths per year.
The report recommends a rapid move away from fossil fuels, as well as a drastic rethinking of agricultural subsidies so that they no longer "directly favor activities that have significant harmful effects on the environment, including on biodiversity."
Robert Watson, a co-chair of the GEO assessment, said in an interview with the Guardian that the climate crisis cannot simply be seen as an environmental issue given that it is now "undermining our economy, food security, water security, human health," and also creating national security problems by increasing "conflict in many parts of the world."
In an interview with BBC, Watson also accused US President Donald Trump's administration of sabotaging the report by refusing to even accept its conclusions about the damage being done by human-induced climate change.
"The US decided not to attend the meeting at all," he explained. "At the very end they joined by teleconference and basically made a statement that they could not agree with most of the report, which means they didn't agree with anything we said on climate change, biodiversity, fossil fuels, plastics, and subsidies."
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The MAHA Commission Won’t Fix Public Health or Our Food System
RFK Jr. sold out on pesticides, but we can course correct if as a society we reprioritize health and start making decisions that benefit people over corporate greed.
Oct 19, 2025
When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. started talking about pesticides, a lot of people got their hopes up that someone might finally fix the broken food system. But instead he bowed to corporate oligarchy when he listened to Big Ag rather than recommending that we stop exposing ourselves to toxic pesticides. This toxic food system wasn’t always our reality, and it doesn’t have to be our future.
In the United States, it is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) job to regulate pesticides. Pesticide manufacturers apply for registration of active ingredients by submitting research (often industry funded) claiming they are safe and effective when used as directed. EPA determines its registration decisions based on a risk assessment and other supporting documents, then a public comment period follows. However, EPA relies on industry-funded research for these decisions, when time and again we have seen the pesticide industry hide evidence that its products cause harm.
Take the herbicide paraquat for instance: Paraquat is a highly toxic pesticide; one teaspoon is enough to kill an adult. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning. This herbicide is commonly used in the United States as weeds become increasingly resistant to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Bayer’s industrial formulation of Roundup™). Paraquat is banned for use in 72 countries. Exposure to paraquat has been increasingly associated with Parkinson’s disease and other chronic conditions like cancer, but Big Ag has successfully pushed back against calls to ban this pesticide in the US for decades.
But this issue is bigger than one chemical; there are hundreds of pesticides in use in this country, and all of them have the potential to cause harm. Be it weeds, bugs, rodents, or fungi, the purpose of these chemicals is to kill what they come in contact with. Our consolidated food system encourages farmers to prioritize quantity over crop diversity—meaning that the largest farms in this country are monoculture operations (farms growing one crop on massive swaths of land). One problem with monoculture is that the pest pressures are significant. It requires high inputs of agrichemicals; you either need a huge amount of labor to pull weeds and hand-pick pests, or you apply increasing quantities of synthetic pesticides to manage pests. Year over year, as farms use more and more pesticides, weeds and pests develop resistance, requiring more frequent application or resorting to stronger, more toxic formulations. This is a vicious cycle that traps farmers by keeping them on a “pesticide treadmill.”
Agorecology is an economically and ecologically viable alternative to our current food system’s foundation of extraction.
This monoculture, ultra-processed food system that relies heavily on toxic chemicals is also making us sick, with microplastics being found in our brains (plastic usage in agriculture is also a growing concern and a major contributor to microplastics in soil); PFAS contaminating our water (many pesticide formulations contain or are themselves PFAS); and children being exposed to pesticides in their backyards, at parks and schools, and in utero. At the same time, farmers are being squeezed by a system that makes it harder for small and medium-sized farms to make a living, with no protections in place except for the corporate players.
It wasn’t one thing that set us on the path to this reality where our food, water, soil, air, and bodies are contaminated with fossil fuel derived agrichemicals and microplastics; there were decisions and policies that over the course of only a few decades cornered us into this reality. The good news is that we can course correct if as a society we reprioritize health and start making decisions that benefit people over corporate greed.
A food system built on agroecology is one that doesn’t rely on agrichemicals to function and is therefore not captured by corporations. An agroecological food system in America looks like thriving and decentralized community food systems, where the people growing and consuming food have control over what goes into and comes out of their food system; grow food without reliance on agrichemical inputs or patented seeds; work with the environment rather than against it; and prioritize health, safety, and collective well-being.
Agorecology is an economically and ecologically viable alternative to our current food system’s foundation of extraction. It is actively practiced around the world, and it existed in what we now call the United States of America long before pesticides were introduced. Our job today is to shift our extractive mindsets to ones that prioritize health, in line with Indigenous wisdom.
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Big Pork Lobby’s War on Farmers, Consumers, and Democracy
Inside the National Pork Producers Council absurd, years-long crusade to kill Prop 12, California’s landmark ballot initiative banning the sale of pork from pigs locked in extreme confinement.
Oct 03, 2025
When Patrick Hord, vice president of the National Pork Producers Council, testified before Congress this summer, he proudly described himself as a fourth-generation hog farmer who produces pork fully compliant with California’s Proposition 12. Then, almost in the same breath, he argued against the very law he already follows.
That contradiction captures the absurdity of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC’s) years-long crusade to kill Prop 12, California’s landmark ballot initiative banning the sale of pork from pigs locked in extreme confinement. Passed by nearly 63% of voters in 2018 and upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2023, Prop 12 is both a democratic mandate and a proven market success. Farmers across the country have adapted to it, retailers have embraced it, and consumers continue to buy pork without complaint. Even giant corporations like Hormel, Tyson, and JBS have quietly moved on.
Yet the NPPC remains stuck, lobbying Congress to pass the so-called “EATS Act” or its rebranded cousins, which would not only overturn Prop 12 but could wipe out hundreds of democratically enacted state laws protecting animal welfare, food safety, public health, environmental safeguards, and consumer rights—undermining both states’ rights and voter-driven initiatives. They’ve fought in the courts, at the ballot box, and in Congress. They’ve lost every time. So the question is worth asking: Who are they even fighting for?
Prop 12: A Win for Farmers and Consumers
For all the NPPC’s fearmongering, Prop 12 has not devastated farmers. Quite the opposite: It has given them stability, opportunity, and new markets.
Thousands of farms, ranches, and gardens nationwide—including more than 500 hog farms—have publicly urged Congress to reject efforts to undermine Prop 12. Ahead of the Agriculture Committee’s hearing in July, more than 150 producers submitted testimony in support of the law. None of them were invited to testify in person, while 2 of the 6 invited witnesses were NPPC representatives.
Farmers deserve better than a trade group that wastes its energy on obstruction instead of building a stronger, more resilient future.
These farmers describe Prop 12 as a safeguard against corporate consolidation. One Missouri hog farmer called it “one of the best things, economically, that’s happened to us in a very long time.” The mid-size Clemens Food Group declared it is “vehemently opposed” to overturning the law. Others say the NPPC is “out of touch” and “struggling to justify its existence.” Many producers have invested in Prop 12-compliant barns and now rely on the premium market it created. Rolling back the law would directly harm their businesses.
And the NPPC’s doomsday predictions about shortages and skyrocketing prices? They simply never happened. Pork has been on California shelves throughout full enforcement, now over two years. Prices rose only about 9.5% since 2023—less than half the average 19% increase in overall food prices. Consumers barely noticed, except to feel better knowing their purchases align with basic decency.
It’s Time to Move Forward
The NPPC’s argument has collapsed not only among family farmers but also within the industry’s biggest corporations.
Tyson, JBS, and Seaboard all now offer Prop 12-compliant pork. Hormel has been selling it since 2022 and continues to supply California fully. Even Smithfield—despite its CEO’s grumbling about costs while pocketing nearly $15 million a year in salary—announced it would comply and has already converted barns.
Tellingly, none of these companies has publicly supported the NPPC’s EATS Act. They’ve moved on, because Prop 12 has opened a premium market and won the favor of retailers and food-service companies eager to meet consumer demand for crate-free pork. National chains now advertise their compliance as part of their corporate responsibility goals.
Demonstrating how out of touch the NPPC is with its customers, public support for Prop 12 remains strong within California, and a 2022 survey found that 80% of American voters would support a similar law in their state.
In other words: the sky never fell. The industry adapted. Consumers are satisfied. And the companies making billions are quietly profiting from progress.
Farmers Deserve Better
So why is the NPPC still fighting a battle it has already lost? At this point, its resistance looks less like advocacy and more like sore-losership.
Instead of helping producers secure contracts, access grants, or provide technical resources for optimizing operations under crate-free systems, the NPPC has funneled resources into endless lawsuits, lobbying campaigns, and even gimmicks like handing out free breakfast sandwiches to members of Congress. Imagine if that money had gone into farmer support, research on higher-welfare systems, or strengthening supply chains.
By clinging to pride instead of progress, the NPPC is standing in the way of the very farmers it claims to defend.
Worse, the NPPC’s message insults the very farmers it claims to represent. By insisting compliance is impossible—even while its own vice president complies without issue—the NPPC portrays pork producers as fragile, incapable of meeting basic updates to industry standards. That narrative undermines the credibility of hardworking farmers who have already adapted, and who see Prop 12 as an opportunity, not a threat.
The courts, the voters, the retailers, and even the producers themselves have accepted the law. The only ones still protesting are the NPPC-backed lobbyists. Farmers deserve better than a trade group that wastes its energy on obstruction instead of building a stronger, more resilient future.
NPPC’s Pride Over Progress
There’s a difference between losing and refusing to learn. Learni ng is honorable; doubling down on disproven claims is childish.
So who exactly is the NPPC fighting for?
- Not farmers—they’ve embraced Prop 12 as a market advantage.
- Not voters—they passed Prop 12 in a landslide and still support it.
- Not customers—they welcome the shift to higher standards.
- Not retailers, courts, or the country—every one of whom has accepted the law.
The only answer left is: themselves.
Prop 12 didn’t destroy the pork industry. It’s making it better, despite NPPC’s refusal to accept the future. What threatens the industry now isn’t higher welfare standards—it’s a lobbying group too stubborn to admit it was wrong. By clinging to pride instead of progress, the NPPC is standing in the way of the very farmers it claims to defend.
As one NPPC spokesman notoriously put it: “So our animals can’t turn around for the 2.5 years that they are in the stalls producing piglets. I don’t know who asked the sow if she wanted to turn around …” I guess we can’t expect much from an industry whose spokesperson says this.
The path forward is clear. Farmers, voters, and customers have already shown that higher standards are not only possible but profitable. The future of farming will be built on resilience, fairness, and humane practices—not on the stale politics of obstruction. It’s time to stop fighting progress and start leading with it.
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Trump's Tariffs Are Extremely Dumb, Just Not For The Reasons You Might Think
This is a con on a global scale. Trump is not rejecting the corporate trade model. He’s weaponizing it.
Apr 04, 2025
On April 2, Donald Trump declared a national emergency and announced sweeping tariffs on nearly all imported goods. The headlines were dramatic — tariffs on China, allies like Canada and Mexico, and everything from cars to coffee beans. His administration framed the move as a patriotic stance for “reciprocal trade” and economic sovereignty.
Don’t be fooled. This isn’t the collapse of “free trade.” It’s the continuation of corporate globalization — just with a MAGA bumper sticker slapped on it.
Trump says he’s standing up for American workers. But he’s the same president who signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and called it “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law.” The rebranded North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal — despite some improvements forced in by congressional Democrats and civil society organizations — contained much of the same structural rot that has enabled outsourcing, empowered monopolies, and tied the hands of governments trying to protect their people and environment.
Trump is not rejecting the corporate trade model. He’s weaponizing it.
For decades, “free trade” deals like NAFTA locked in rules written by and for multinational corporations: rules that made offshoring easier, gutted environmental protections, and prioritized investor rights over worker rights. Stagnant wages, emptied factory towns, and rising income inequality have caused widespread pain and frustration among working Americans — which Trump has weaponized again and again.
Tariffs can be part of the answer to these problems, but Trump’s ham-handed approach is not it. There’s no industrial strategy. No labor plan. No climate protections. Just a unilateral, top-down stunt that does nothing to dismantle the corporate architecture still rigging the global economy.
Pair this “concept of a plan” with the rest of his agenda: gutting investment in vital sectors such as biomedical research, support for basic science and clean and affordable energy technologies and products; slashing all efforts to combat child labor and other egregious labor rights violations around the world, providing tax cuts for billionaires and corporations; stripping away health care, food support and other vital services for the most vulnerable Americans, undermining Social Security, and decertifying and undermining the power of labor unions.
It’s clear working people will not be the winners here.
Who Wrote the Rules? U.S. Corporations, Not Foreign Adversaries
Trump loves to blame other countries, claiming global trade has “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered” the U.S. economy in his “Liberation Day” speech. He claims that the U.S. has been victimized by other countries and has been “too nice” in response.
Nothing could be further from the truth — the rules of the neoliberal trade system were rigged in favor of large corporate interests in the Global North. While workers in the U.S. and around the world were the losers, Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and other U.S. corporate giants have always been the winners.
For decades, U.S. corporate lobbyists have used their privileged access to closed-door trade negotiations to rig the rules to maximize their profits, not to serve working people, small businesses, or the environment.
They pushed for extreme intellectual property rules to entrench Big Pharma monopolies that keep the price of medicines sky high, with deadly consequences. They demanded open capital markets and deregulated financial flows for Wall Street while securing rules that let agribusiness giants flood foreign markets with subsidized U.S. commodities, displacing millions of farmers and leading to forced migration.
Trade justice requires more than poorly designed tariffs. It demands systemic reform: binding labor rights, climate protections, resilient supply chains, and democratic accountability. Trump offers none of that.
At the same time, they ensured that governments couldn’t support domestic industries, raise labor standards, or enforce environmental protections without being accused of “trade distortion.” The result was a race to the bottom for workers and communities — here and abroad — with record profits for corporate giants.
It matters a lot that Trump is identifying the wrong perpetrators of the failed global trade system because that sets the table for wrong solutions.
Once we identify multinational corporations as the architects of the current system, we’re directed toward the right solutions – not blanket, high tariffs based on mindless formulas, but a new trade policy and new trade rules that prioritize the interests of workers, consumers, and the environment.
NAFTA to USMCA: Same Corporate Model With Some Improvements (No Thanks to Trump)
Trump spent years railing against NAFTA as the “worst trade deal anybody in history has ever entered into,” tapping into the legitimate grievances of workers and communities harmed by its race to the bottom. He campaigned on a promise to eliminate it and replace it with a better agreement for workers.
However, once elected, he opted to renegotiate and rebrand the deal in the form of the USMCA, which he then insisted was “the best trade deal in history.” Now, in a dizzying reversal, he’s claiming the USMCA has been a disaster that only an aggressive wave of “retaliatory” tariffs on Canada and Mexico will fix.
In reality, while some improvements were forced into the negotiation, the USMCA largely preserved the core logic that made NAFTA so harmful in the first place. It expands corporate rights, limits democratic oversight, and undermines public protections in the name of increased trade.
The new labor provisions — often cited as proof of a “new era” in trade — were not original features of Trump’s deal. They were won through months of intense organizing and negotiation by House Democrats, labor unions, and civil society groups.
Congressional Democrats working in close alliance with the AFL-CIO drew a hard line. Backed by the relentless organizing of groups like Public Citizen, the Communications Workers of America, United Steelworkers, and a transnational coalition of Mexican and Canadian labor and civil society partners, they made it clear: they would block passage of any deal unless meaningful labor enforcement were included and damaging Big Pharma giveaways were removed.
Trump’s administration favored language that preserved corporate prerogatives and offered only symbolic nods to labor rights. Still, in the end, it acquiesced to congressional Democrats’ demands. It incorporated essential tools like the facility-specific Rapid Response Mechanism for labor enforcement and eliminated some of the most egregious giveaways to Big Pharma.
However, the structural rot from NAFTA remained.
While experts across the ideological spectrum lauded the drastic reduction of controversial investor privileges that allow corporations to sue governments over public interest laws through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), Trump preserved ISDS for fossil fuel firms operating in Mexico — a carve-out aggressively pushed by Big Oil.
Agribusiness also retained its arsenal. The ongoing U.S. trade challenge to Mexico’s restrictions on genetically modified corn — measures rooted in precautionary health standards and cultural preservation — reveal the deal’s true intent. Rather than respecting national policy space over food safety, trade rules are once again being deployed to dismantle domestic protections at the behest of corporations.
Not only did Trump fail to fix NAFTA, but he made it even worse in at least one crucial way: Big Tech secured its wishlist in the form of a digital trade chapter. These new terms undermine the ability of U.S. states, Congress, and other countries’ governments to hold Big Tech accountable for gender and racial bias in AI, rampant abuse of our privacy, and monopolistic overreach.
Performative “Protectionism” and the Authoritarian Trade Playbook
Far from dismantling the corporate trade regime, Trump’s first term revealed him as a loyal steward of it — so long as he could plaster his name on it. Despite the USMCA rebrand, he left the core NAFTA structure intact and continued to stoke public anger over working people’s struggles — not by confronting the root causes but by scapegoating other nations. And he has been increasingly employing tariff threats as his weapon of choice — not in pursuit of justice but as a blunt instrument of control.
Just weeks ago, Trump threatened new tariffs unless Mexico deployed troops to militarize the border. He pressured Colombia to accept a deportation flight of asylum seekers.
Big Tech companies are awaiting their handouts, as it is widely expected that Trump will lift tariffs on countries that agree to undo tech accountability policies.
And perversely, he is using tariffs as a cudgel to pressure other countries into signing the very liberalizing trade agreements he claims to oppose.
“Liberation Day” was more of the same from this ever-more-authoritarian White House: an emergency decree bypassing Congress, escalating instability, and concentrating power in the executive. Trump hasn’t rejected the anti-democratic nature of the neoliberal trade model — he’s replicating it with a vengeance.
All Madness, No Method
While tariffs can be a useful tool, they must be transparently employed in strategic sectors for a clear purpose following careful analysis and open debate.
Trump’s tariffs, however, are based on misleading data and flawed logic. He uses exaggerated trade deficit calculations and stays silent on how the U.S. dollar’s dominance enables America to import far more than it exports, a luxury most Global South nations — burdened with debt and structural trade deficits — cannot afford.
The methodology behind these tariffs has experts scratching their heads.
Trump claimed that the “reciprocal tariffs” were derived from a detailed assessment of each country’s tariff and non-tariff barriers (more on these in a moment). In fact, the number assigned to each country seems to be based on the difference between the total value of imports the U.S. receives from a country versus the amount we export to it.
Apparently, no regard was given to why there may be a large imbalance. For example, Lesotho, which Trump dismissed as a country “nobody has ever heard of,” was hit with the highest tariff of any country at 50%. Forget the fact that the small, landlocked country’s population of 2 million may not be able to afford Made in America products, leading to a lopsided trade balance.
The crude formula used to determine each country’s “reciprocal” tariff was described by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman as something that appeared to be “thrown together by a junior staffer with only a couple of hours’ notice,” and “reads like something written by a student who hasn’t done the reading and is trying to bullshit their way through an exam.”
As some commentators have noted, this tariff breakdown is what you get if you ask ChatGPT to come up with a U.S. trade policy. This could very well be the first global economic policy written “of, by, and for” our robot overlords. What could possibly go wrong?
The Corporate Wishlist
Since the Trump administration clearly did not take on the, admittedly Herculean, task of reviewing the thousands of tariffs and trade barriers imposed by hundreds of countries, it simply used trade imbalances as a crude proxy. It’s a stand-in for the cost of that country’s tariffs and, importantly, its non-tariff barriers.
“Non-tariff barrier” is trade-speak for “any policy that’s not a tariff” but might restrict trade — from climate protections to minimum wage laws to consumer protections in the form of toxic food additives. While many non-tariff barriers serve vital public policies, corporations and trade negotiators often treat them as obstacles to profit.
According to the April 2 executive order, Trump can unilaterally decide to lower the tariffs imposed on a country if it takes “significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements and align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national security matters.”
What constitutes a “significant step” isn’t defined, but it certainly looks like an open invitation for governments to slash their tariffs and reverse policies to appease Trump and his billionaire buddies.
For what exactly those policies may be, just look to the report Trump waved around at the beginning of his so-called “Liberation Day” tariff announcement speech in the Rose Garden.
That document is a 400-page list of the policies that other countries have enacted — or are even considering enacting — that U.S. corporations don’t like. It’s the National Trade Estimates Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, an annual government report that has long been criticized as an inappropriate overreach to name and shame other countries’ legitimate public interest policies. It’s also a glimpse of the policies that Trump may seek to have destroyed in exchange for tariff relief.
The policies targeted in this year’s report include climate protections, including Canada’s Clean Fuel Standard, the European Union’s Deforestation-Free Supply Chain Regulation, and Japan’s renewable energy incentives — all of which are aligned with global climate commitments.
Public health regulations aimed at protecting consumers, preserving biodiversity, and preventing long-term health risks were also attacked. Employed by dozens of countries, these include bans, testing requirements, or even labeling policies on pesticides like Roundup’s glyphosate, genetically engineered food, ractopamine in beef and pork, and heavy metals in cosmetics.
Regulations that promote competition in the digital ecosystem, laws that impose digital services taxes on Big Tech firms, place conditions for cross-border data transfers, promote fairness in the digital economy, and laws that regulate emerging technologies such as AI.
Benefits for Trump’s Buddies
Countries are not the only ones who will be supplicating to avoid the full weight of Trump’s tariffs. Despite Trump’s claims that other countries foot the bill on tariffs, it is U.S. importers who must pay this fee … unless they can convince Trump to grant them a special exemption.
It is well-documented that the opaque and chaotic tariff exclusion process created in Trump’s first term quickly overwhelmed government agencies and enabled a quid pro quo spoils system that rewarded the rich and well-connected. A revolving door of lobbyists, including former and future Trump administration officials, were able to secure lucrative tariff exceptions for their CEO clients through political pressure, informal meetings, and campaign contributions.
Trump’s latest stunt had nothing to do with “liberation.” You can’t fix a rigged trade system while keeping its rules and attacking people at every turn.
Through this system, Trump wielded tariffs and tariff exceptions to reward his friends and punish his enemies. CEOs that donated to Republicans had a 1 in 5 chance of having their exemption request granted versus 1 in 10 for CEOs that supported Democrats, according to a January 2025 study.
If Trump’s recent attacks on law firms, universities, and the press are any indication, he’s prepared to double down on using his second term to punish enemies and enrich himself and his friends. And his dismantling of watchdog agencies and boosting of big business ties set the stage for tariff exemptions to be even more corrupt and harmful to workers, consumers, and the U.S. and global economy.
What other displays of political loyalty might companies offer to Trump for a tariff exclusion this time around? Public endorsement of his policies? Promises to monitor employees for DEI ideologies or views critical of the administration?
We Deserve Better
Trade justice requires more than poorly designed tariffs. It demands systemic reform: binding labor rights, climate protections, resilient supply chains, and democratic accountability. Trump offers none of that.
There’s no industrial plan. No support for unions. No climate-resilience vision. Just a chaotic, performative tariff regime, which in practice will surely be wielded to reward loyalty and punish dissent.
Trump’s latest stunt had nothing to do with “liberation.” You can’t fix a rigged trade system while keeping its rules and attacking people at every turn. Trump talks a big game but serves the same corporate interests that gutted labor rights in the first place. Working people deserve a system with them at the center, not one that favors corporations.
This isn’t trade justice. It’s a con.
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The Real Reason for Soaring Egg Prices? Gouging by the 'Rotten Egg Oligarchy'
A new Food & Water Watch report details how "corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
Mar 04, 2025
The nation's largest egg producers would have American consumers believe that avian flu and inflation are behind soaring prices, but a report published Tuesday shows corporate price gouging is the real culprit driving the record cost of the dietary staple.
The fourth installment of Food & Water Watch's (FWW) Economic Cost of Food Monopolies series—titled The Rotten Egg Oligarchy—reports that the average price of a dozen eggs in the United States hit an all-time high of $4.95 in January 2025. That's more than two-and-a-half times the average price from three years ago.
"While egg prices spiral out of reach, making eggs a luxury item, Big Ag is profiting hand over fist," FWW research director Amanda Starbuck said in a statement. "But make no mistake—today's high prices are built on a foundation of corporate price gouging. Our research shows how corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
FWW found that "egg prices were already rising before the current [avian flu] outbreak hit U.S. commercial poultry flocks in February 2022, and have never returned to pre-outbreak levels."
Furthermore, "egg price spikes hit regions that were bird flu-free until recently," the report states. "The U.S. Southeast remained free of bird flu in its table egg flocks until January 2025, and actually increased egg production in 2022 and 2023 over 2021 levels. Nevertheless, retail egg prices in the Southeast rose alongside January 2023's national price spikes."
"The corporate food system is to blame for exacerbating the scale of the outbreak as well as the high cost of eggs," the publication continues. "Factory farms are virus incubators, with the movement of animals, machines, and workers between operations helping to spread the virus."
"Meanwhile, just a handful of companies produce the majority of our eggs, giving them outsized control over the prices paid by retailers, who often pass on rising costs to consumers," the paper adds. "This highly consolidated food system also enables companies to leverage a temporary shortage in one region to raise prices across the entire country."
Cal-Maine, the nation's top egg producer, enjoyed a more than 600% increase in gross profits between fiscal years 2021-23, according to FWW. The Mississippi-based company did not suffer any avian flu outbreaks in fiscal year 2023, during which it sold more eggs than during the previous two years. Yet it still sold conventional eggs at nearly three times the price as in 2021, amounting to over $1 billion in windfall profits. Meanwhile Cal-Maine paid shareholders dividends totaling $250 million in 2023, 40 times more during the previous fiscal year.
The report highlights how factory farming creates ideal conditions for the spread of avian flu, a single case of which requires the extermination of the entire flock at the affected facility, under federal regulations.
"These impacts cannot be understated," FWW stressed. "Today's average factory egg farm confines over 800,000 birds, with some operations confining several million. This magnifies the scale of animal suffering and death, as well as the enormous environmental and safety burden of disposing of a million or more infected bird carcasses."
Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures, The Guardian reported Tuesday that more than 54 million birds have been affected in the past three months alone.
Egg producers know precisely how the supply-and-demand implications of these outbreaks and subsequent culls can boost their bottom lines. Meanwhile, they play a dangerous game as epidemiologists widely view a potential avian flu mutation that can be transmitted from birds to humans as the next major pandemic threat—one that's exacerbated by the Trump administration's withdrawal from the World Health Organization and cuts to federal agencies focused on averting the next pandemic.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else."
So far, 70 avian flu cases—one of them fatal—have been reported in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, under Trump, the CDC has stopped publishing regular reports on its avian flu response plans and activities. The USDA, meanwhile, said it "accidentally" terminated staffers working on avian flu response during the firing flurry under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The agency is scrambling to reverse the move.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else," the FWW report argues. "Nor can we allow the factory farm system to continue polluting our environment and serving as the breeding ground for the next human pandemic."
"We need to enforce our nation's antitrust laws to go after corporate price fixing and collusion," the publication adds. "We also need a national ban on new and expanding factory farms, while transitioning to smaller, regional food systems that are more resilient to disruptions."
That is highly unlikely under Trump, whose policies—from taxation to regulation and beyond—have overwhelmingly favored the ultrawealthy and corporations over working Americans. Meanwhile, one of the president's signature campaign promises, to lower food prices "on day one," has evaporated amid ever-rising consumer costs.
According to the USDA's latest Food Price Outlook, overall food prices are projected to rise 3.4% in 2025. Eggs, however, are forecast to soar a staggering 41.1% this year—and possibly by as much as 74.9%.
"If President Trump has any interest in fulfilling his campaign pledge to lower food prices," Starbuck stressed, "he must begin by taking on the food monopolies exploiting pandemic threat for profit."
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My "Beef" with Bobby: On the Trouble With RFK Jr.
If Kennedy really wants to “Make America Healthy Again,” he could instead start by addressing the dangers of red and processed meats, a concern grounded in science.
Jan 28, 2025
Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has triggered controversy. Many have rightly criticized his ongoing anti-vaccine messaging. He’s also erroneously claimed that antidepressants were linked to school shootings, among other falsities.
Despite this all, his confirmation seems likely. So, let us prepare.
Kennedy promises to take on ultra-processed foods. He has alerted Americans that their over-consumption is linked to multiple maladies, from diabetes to heart disease. He also advocates banning them from school lunches.
On this, I say, “Right on, Bobby!”
The American diet poses great risks, including its heavy reliance on ultra-processed foods. They are one reason for our shockingly low international health and health-system ranking—way down at 69th. Unfortunately, RFK’s tendency to mislead carries over to this issue. It’s already clear that his campaign against ultra-processed food is not evidence-based. For example, he falsely claims seed oils (sunflower and canola) are harmful.
If confirmed, RFK Jr. will oversee the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), giving him power to regulate our food industry as well as a much-broader mandate: “to safeguard the food supply.”
If Kennedy really wants to “Make America Healthy Again,” he could instead start by addressing the dangers of red and processed meats, a concern grounded in science. The World Health Organization identifies red meat as a probable carcinogen and processed meat a carcinogen. Likewise, a meta-analysis of 148 studies reveals that red meat—especially processed meat—contributes to higher risks for a range of cancers.
Crucially, today’s definition of “food-borne illnesses” contains a serious oversight: the deadly diseases linked to red meat and processed meats. We have a right to be outraged that the FDA still fails to require warning labels or otherwise alert the public to this serious harm. The recently proposed front-of-package labels for saturated fats, sodium, and sugar would be a first step, but we cannot stop there.
Perhaps most troubling, the agency has enabled ultra-processed meats—hot dogs or bologna—to be fed to our children at our schools. Loose guidelines also allow mega-food corporations like Kraft Heinz to introduce ultra-processed products like Lunchables in school cafeterias. Sadly, for many children, school meals are their main source of nutrition. We need to do better by them.
This crisis also reflects the political power of the meat industry. Therefore, RFK Jr. must stand up to this pernicious interest group, which “spent more than $10 million on political contributions and lobbying efforts in 2023,” which for some, “was an all-time high,” reports the Missouri Independent.
Over more than 50 years, a number of my books, starting with Diet for a Small Planet, have focused on the needless waste, ecological destruction, and hunger built into our grain-fed-meat-centered diets—all driven by the highly concentrated power of corporate agribusiness. I have stressed the health benefits of plant-based diets.
The great news is that diets rich in whole grains, legumes, fish, fruits, vegetables, and nuts—with little or no red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, and refined grains—can lengthen our lives. A much-cited 2001 National Institute of Health study predicted that avoiding meat contributes to lifestyles that could add ten years to one’s life. Even if one began this healthier diet as late as age 60, life-expectancy increases over eight years for women and almost nine years for men.
To enable access to wholesome diets, Kennedy must also do his part to tackle the growing crisis of “food deserts”—low-income, urban areas where at least a third of residents live a mile or more from a supermarket. This barrier to healthy diets affects over 40 millions of us. The HHS will oversee the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which inform key programs such as SNAP and the National School Lunch Program. Here, we must urge RFK Jr. to focus on the science: processed meats are dangerous.
In all this, we must remain vigilant in holding Kennedy and the broader Trump administration accountable. We must also work for political reforms to ensure our elected officials are no longer corrupted by private interests. Our fight to protect our community’s health goes hand-in-hand with our fight for democracy.
Every bite we eat is a choice for the world we want. So, let’s push the incoming head of the HHS to ensure that all Americans are able to take healthy, wholesome bites.
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