Issue Position: Real Farm Policy

Issue Position

As the son of a farmer, and the owner of a bakery that works with local wheat producers, Matt understands that our current farm policy is primarily corporate welfare for companies like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland. It has lead to increased profits for banks who farmers are often forced to borrow from in order to continue operations, and fleeces the communities where farm products and profits are generated. Matt supports new legislation and policies that will rebuild community owned infrastructure to support farming, and new policies which encourage local farm production for local consumption. These policies will also increase use of sustainable organic farming practices that leave profits with the farmers instead of chemical manufacturers.

Matt supports a re-engineering of farm policy to provide support for farm cooperatives that allow small farmers to share the ownership and use of expensive farm equipment, and new marketing cooperatives that allow farmers to retain a larger piece of the profits from their crops. Matt's farm policy would also support local sales of locally grown crops to provide economic renewal for America's rural farm communities. Our present industrial agricultural policy creates incentives for unsustainable farming practices that weaken the soil, and remove most of the profits from the farm communities where the crops are grown, then sends those profits to banking institutions outside the community that finance expensive equipment, chemicals, and genetically modified seeds required to deal with industrial food processors who purchase most of the crops produced in this country.

Through the renewed use of cooperatives and a community focused agricultural policy, Matt believes that rural America can be revitalized as an engine for economic growth that is vital to restoring some of the most economically fragile communities in the United States, our rural farming communities.

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