Grocery prices are up because big food corporations keep Missouri farmers’ hands tied | Opinion

Growing up, I always wanted to be a farmer. During childhood, I spent a lot of time visiting my grandparents and great-grandparents on their small acreages, watching how they tended to their land — and I couldn’t wait to have some land of my own.

But as a younger farmer, I know firsthand how difficult it is to start your own operation. Just like my fellow young farmers know, it’s virtually impossible to find affordable land, especially for farmers of color, for whom recourse to farm loans and government support has been systematically curtailed. Land is expensive and is being gobbled up by corporations and investment firms that export their profits miles away. This includes factory farms that often worsen water and air quality for neighbors and can pollute local independent family farms, which are trying to make a real contribution to their local economies.

As individuals, farmers can’t take on massive corporations alone — they have rigged the system against us, and we need our representatives to step up and use federal legislation such as the delayed 2023 farm bill to rein in corporate greed and put power back in the hands of the people.

Keeping land in the hands of local farmers is just one of many hurdles in an industry that’s become overwhelmed by corporate control. While you might assume farmers and ranchers are raking in money since food prices are rising at the highest rates in decades, we’re actually getting less than ever.

Corporations have made record profits in part by paying farmers less and less over the past 40 years, while selling to consumers at increasing prices. From 2010 to 2020 alone, massive meat-packers Tyson Foods and Brazil-based JBS S.A. reportedly had a 34% and 66% increase in revenue from their cattle operations respectively, while the farmers’ share — beef’s value to the rancher divided by its retail value — decreased by 9%.

At the same time that corporations are raising prices dramatically, critical food programs in the farm bill, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are on the chopping block in Congress. A reduction in access to affordable nutrition would worsen household and child food insecurity, as well as exacerbate health care issues, especially for rural families. This isn’t what American families deserve and would only add insult to the injury of rural communities that are already plundered by multinational food corporations.

While too many politicians and corporations ignore families’ real needs, local farmers are working hard to serve their communities. At the Missouri grocery store where I worked as a buyer — coordinating the purchase and shipment of the products we sell — for the past two decades, we only raise prices when they go above an agreed-upon threshold and routinely pass on a much lower markup for locally produced food in order to support our producer community.

We need Congress actually to represent us and pass laws that support local family farms and curb corporate control of the food industry. I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., (along with fellow farmers, ranchers and advocates from the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment) to ask lawmakers to advance commonsense protections and programs to help local businesses thrive.

For example, the American Beef Labeling Act would restore mandatory country-of-origin labeling, which would give consumers the transparency they deserve to make informed decisions, especially if they prefer to choose meat that’s born and raised in the United States.

The 50/14 Spot Market Protection Bill would also require large meat-packers to purchase 50% of their supply on the cash market and not own the livestock for more than 14 days before processing. This would help stop meat-packers from being able to manipulate the price of cattle. We need only look to the bleak hog market today to see how urgently this is needed across the board. I raise hogs on pasture, and since that cash market has all but disappeared and auction barns don’t buy hogs anymore, I can only sell the animals locally, so it’s difficult to gauge demand. This has left many farmers with an excess of hogs at inopportune times, such as when prices plunged from highs of near $120 per hundredweight down to around $75 in the middle of 2023.

Corporations have been writing the rules for entirely too long, lobbying for policies that often lead to declining farm incomes, stagnant wages for workers, higher grocery prices and fewer choices for consumers, and the erosion of local economic vitality. Even as the U.S. Department of Agriculture tries to develop stronger packers and stockyard rules to enforce existing antitrust laws in agriculture, corporations are fighting to block these updates. They just won’t stop.

Now that Congress issued a year-long extension through September 2024 for the passage of the 2023 farm bill, this is our time. This is our chance for a farm bill that gives new and current farmers a fair shot at success while also ensuring vibrant rural economies and access to nutritious food in all our communities.

More than 100 organizations are urging House and Senate agriculture committee leaders to work on a food and farm bill that rejects the corporate status quo. I hope members of Congress will stand up for the local farms and businesses, which are the true backbone of rural America.

Noah Earle is a livestock farmer, member of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Missouri Rural Crisis Center, musician and co-owner of Clovers Natural Markets in Columbia.