Hello Farm Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a chilly negative 7 degrees here at the farm on what happens to be inauguration day 2025.\u00a0 I make it a point to not discuss politics in the farm blog, but there was one issue from the election that really stood out to me. \u00a0 I never expected a politician to stand up and talk about the issue of the declining\u00a0 health of Americans, our food system, and our agricultural system. \u00a0 I have always held the belief that there is too much corporate money in politics and campaign finance for any politician to ever challenge a big industry. So, whether you like him or not, I am grateful that RFK Jr. brought these very real issues to the forefront of the media and the political world. \u00a0 I have always felt these were some of the biggest issues that we face as people, and as a society, and the lack of discussion around them was problematic..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do I truly believe that Trump 2.0 is going to Make America Healthy Again? No. I would say I am hopeful, but not optimistic. And that\u2019s not a knock against the administration, it\u2019s an acknowledgment of how powerful the food and chemical industries are in our country. Our campaign finance system and the army of special interest lobbyists filling the halls of Washington D.C. have captured our economy and the federal policy around healthcare, food, and agriculture. Do I expect these corporations to roll over and give up their profits to make America healthy again? I do not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0I do think they will make token changes if it doesn’t cost them anything (like the banning of Red Dye #40), and they will consider other changes that bring them bigger profits, and I suppose that\u2019s some improvement.\u00a0 But the bigger issues we face are systemic, and these corporations hold a LOT of power and are doing great in the current system, so I question their willingness to go along with any meaningful level of change.\u00a0 The power of these industries will force the administration to make serious compromises which will basically undermine the goal of MAHA.\u00a0 Changing the health of Americans and our landscape goes all the way back to changing our mindset about the values that we prioritize (putting health higher than profit), and I’m not convinced we are there as a society yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just for fun, let\u2019s ask the question:\u00a0 Why can\u2019t we have healthy food at an affordable cost?\u00a0 If Trump 2.0 is serious about MAHA, then the federal government would have to change it\u2019s policies, incentives, and subsidies to work towards that goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As it stands now, almost 70% of the average American\u2019s caloric intake comes from ultra-processed foods.\u00a0 And these foods are\u00a0 primarily manufactured from commodity crops like corn, soybeans, sugar beets, canola, etc. \u00a0 And the vast majority of agricultural subsidies from the USDA flow to commodity producers.\u00a0 In other words, the current government policy for agriculture supports, crop insurance, and subsidies all incentivize the production of ultra-processed food.\u00a0 And there are 2 primary beneficiaries of the system (hint, it\u2019s not the farmers).\u00a0 First, the huge food processing corporations are able to buy inputs at a costs that is often lower than the cost of production, which really helps improve profit margins.\u00a0 Two, commodity agriculture depends on patented seeds, herbicides, and chemical inputs, and so the amalgamated biotech\/chemical companies like Bayer\/Monsanto are making huge profits selling these inputs to farmers in the commodity system.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To make America healthy again, we would need to make our food healthy again, which means we would have to make our soil and land healthy again.\u00a0 And doing that more or less means doing away with harmful agricultural chemicals.\u00a0 Do you envision Dupont, Syngenta, and Bayer folding up shop and shifting production to dandelion tinctures or biological amendments? \u00a0 I don\u2019t see that happening. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would ultimately require industry folks to re-prioritize health over profits, and that is more or less the opposite of our current economy.\u00a0 The only change that I think is feasible would be health AND profits, and I don’t know what that looks like in an industrial system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a moment, let\u2019s consider it from the opposite direction.\u00a0 IF the federal government wanted to MAHA, the concrete first steps that it could take would be to completely revise the subsidy structure of the USDA.\u00a0 Either get rid of it all together so that processed foods reflect their true, unsubsidized value, which makes healthy food more cost competitive; or, change it to subsidize healthy food production to bring down the cost of healthy food.\u00a0 Oh, and for the love of God, could we please change school lunches to be healthy instead of serving as a sponge to soak up surplus ag commodities? There is no path to MAHA with changing school lunches!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most politicians willing to consider that would immediately face a primary challenger funded by the chemical industry, as well as all the marketing and rhetoric that their money pays for.\u00a0 Which is why no politician up until now has dared broach the subject.\u00a0 Most politicians put their own self-interest of staying in office ahead of the good of the American people.\u00a0 That\u2019s human nature I suppose. \u00a0 Trump 2.0 is not running for re-election, and he is disruptive, and so it will be interesting to see how this all unfolds. It’s all a bit surreal that the president who claims fast food is his favorite is now proposing the Make America Healthy Again initiative!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But at the end of the day, I am highly skeptical of real top down change. \u00a0 But that\u2019s ok, because I\u2019ve never held that expectation or belief that change would ever come from the top down.\u00a0 I have always been a believer in change on the individual level, from the ground up.\u00a0 And my hope in all of this is that the discussion of the issues, and bringing them to light, will encourage more Americans to make changes in their own lives to improve the nutrition and health.\u00a0 I’ll hit on that more in Part II<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stay warm out there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Todd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello Farm Friends, It is a chilly negative 7 degrees here at the farm on what happens to be inauguration day 2025.\u00a0 I make it a point to not discuss politics in the farm blog, but there was one issue from the election that really stood out to me. \u00a0 I never expected a politician […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gp22-1Ww","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/inaugaration-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twobearfarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}