Pulling Together. Moving Forward. Stand with LSP on the Farm Crisis.
The pain of this crisis is not being felt by agribusiness and corporate interests that continue to make profits at the expense of farmers and rural communities. The fact is that there is money in agriculture, but farmers are not getting a fair share of the economic benefits being generated by the food they labor to produce on the land.
Failure to address the destruction of farm-level profitability is not acceptable and is producing devastating results. The combined impact of these structural forces — left to play out without intervention from our elected representatives, our public officials, and farmers themselves — may very well lead to the extinction of the next wave of the kinds of small- to mid-sized farm operations, particularly family dairy farmers, that are the source of vitality for rural communities. Long-term food security and environmental stewardship require more farmers, not less, and stronger rural communities, not weaker ones.
Farmers and their allies must unite around a common cause, and work to advance their own personal and community self-economic interest, as well as further the interest of farmers beyond their own communities who represent a diversity of farming approaches and a diversity of backgrounds. LSP believes that racial justice is deeply connected to economic justice for farmers and rural people, which is why we’re committed to engaging in racial justice work, alongside our allies, as we address the ongoing farm crisis.
This is the source of our strength, our resilience, our solutions, and our power.
From Our Minnesota Governor, Legislature & Attorney General We Need:
- To strengthen our Minnesota Farm Advocates Program.
- The Minnesota Attorney General must use his authority to investigate farmer-owned cooperatives that aren’t supporting farmers.
- Opportunities for farmers to restructure loans.
- A moratorium on massive dairies >1,000 animal units.
- Affordable healthcare for farmers and rural communities.
From Our Federal Leaders We Demand:
- End corporate mega-mergers
- Establish a grain supply management system
- Short-term dairy relief and long-term solutions for small and mid-sized dairies (as proposed in the “Dairy Together” roadshow in Greenwald, Minn.)
- Federal farm subsidies with limits and that are tied directly to stewardship
- Country of origin labeling (COOL)
- 40-year fixed farmland loans provided by the Farm Service Agency