A Million New Family Farms! Food for Cities, Not Global Monopolies

The independent, technology-proud family farm and ranch have been a defining part of the American System of economics from the beginning of the new U.S. repub­lic. Functioning alongside manufacturing, infrastructure, and scientific innovation, farms and ranches are a critical part of the American economy. Farmers not only produce food, they are highly-skilled, moral citizens, and are custo­dians of our natural resources. In the early decades of the young republic, American farm families were called “Latin farmers,” because of their scientific learning and skills. Stimulated by Alexander Hamilton’s economic policies, food output increased many times over, as the new nation broke out of the East India Company monopoly policy of the defeated British Empire.

President Abraham Lincoln adopted a Hamiltonian ap­proach to intervene amidst the 1860s Civil War crisis, to protect and advance the family farm. His administration built railroads, set up the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote science, and implemented the Homestead Act, to establish more farms.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt intervened in the 1930s Depression, to rescue family farms. He declared a moratorium on all farm foreclosures. He established a reli­able income for them through anti-inflation parity pricing; he built new water and power infrastructure. He saved the U.S. food supply. The U.S. became an agriculture power­house as of mid-20th century.

Family Farm Disappearance Crisis

We are now at a new crisis point amidst the tremors of a mega-crash. We have lost 145,000 family farms in the last five years. The de-structuring of the American System of economy over the last 70 years has undermined the fam­ily farm to the point of extinction, while cities, too, decay. Parity pricing was phased out, so farm and ranch income, prone to wide swings, is below cost-of-production. Family farms have continued to operate at a loss only by house­hold members working off-farm jobs, in addition to farm­ing. Even that no longer works.

Government policy was corrupted to allow monopoliza­tion of farm inputs, food processing and retailing. Antitrust laws have been ignored. Cartels of mega-firms imposed “global sourcing” of food commodities. U.S. consumption depends now on imports—up to even 90% of many foods! Since 2019, the value of U.S. agriculture imports has ex­ceeded exports. Poor nations are looted in the process.

On top of this, the 2000 Commodities Futures Trade Modernization Act, along with the 1999 repeal of Glass- Steagall, has allowed wild speculation in food and farm input commodities. Vulture funds like BlackRock are po­sitioned in all the big-name monopolies of the agro-finan­cial-complex—ADM, Bunge, BASF, Kroger, JBS, Smithfield Foods, and more.

The result? A billion people lack sufficient food; of those 400 million are desperate.

We can rebuild the family farm as we restore the American System. We have precedents for all the interventions needed.

1. Take action to favor family-scale, owner-operated farm­ing and ranching and to protect food processing and distribution. Restore anti-inflationary parity pricing.
2. Implement anti-trust laws; roll back cartel-serving international trade agreements; outlaw commodities speculation.
3. Work with all nations to support farmers everywhere. End all hunger; double world food production.
4. Subsidize young people getting started.
5. Build big infrastructure—water systems, power, transportation.
6. End the green fraud. Restore sci­ence and classical education.