Trump & US Agrifood Policy

Join us for this episode of the Eat Rooted podcast where we sit down to talk about all things Trump and US agrifood policy.

We look to his past presidency to understand what might be in store for this one, while taking a broad overview of how the US food system works from a policy perspective. We're talking about the Farm Bill, agricultural subsidies, the role of California in the US food system, US food aid, Trump's staff picks and cabinet appointees, the already precarious and dangerous impacts of his agricultural policy, and more

TRANSCRIPT

We talked a little bit about U.S. food policy, how commodity crop and specialty crop subsidies work, why California is so important, the United States food system, a little bit about how investment from large-scale investors in agriculture is destabilizing food systems, how that impacts the stability and resilience of the food system. I talked a little bit about Trump's staff...

Welcome to Rooted, where we talk about food values and the environment through a liberation lens. We help you put your values on your plate so you can live a life you love and feel proud of. We're your hosts. I'm Mairi.

Cate

And I'm Cate. We're two sisters who believe both individual and systemic change are needed to change the world. We've spent years living sustainably oriented lifestyles while working towards systemic changes in our careers. Visit us at eatingrooted.com for podcast transcripts, to read the blog, and to learn more about how we can help you with customized design and coaching for your edible and herbal kitchen garden.

Mairi

Today we are back with another episode of Eat Rooted and we are talking about Trump and agri-food policy and what this looked like under his past presidency as well as some ideas of what we can expect for his term as the 47th president of the United States.

We're going to talk about a few different issues today and a few different sectors. But do you know how food policy works in the United States, Catie? I realize this is my sector more so than it is yours. And I'm curious what kind of questions people might have about this area that they don't necessarily if they don't work in it. But I have a few topics prepared, but anything that comes to the top of your mind.

(00:01:36) Cate

I don't think that I could tell anybody off the top of my head exactly how food policy works in the United States. I think I have a very generalized idea. And I understand the very far reaching socio and economic and environmental implications. But I don't have like a really strong grasp on how it works. So I'm excited to learn today.

Mairi

Okay, yeah. So this is not going to be an exhaustive overview. It's again, this is going to be a little bit more of just a, kind of a brain dump.So definitely go look things up, but it's complicated. So it operates at the federal level. It's directly tied and related to agricultural policy, and it also is implemented at the state level. So there's these various levers and layers. And it also operates both through legislation as well as through political appointments.

So policies like the Farm Bill, which is typically passed every five years and has been since the 1930s, approximately are passed by Congress. And those are really important pieces of legislation that determine subsidies for farmers. They also, I believe, do include things in there for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, sometimes known as EBT or Electronic Benefit Transfer, and what a lot of people who aren't familiar with the program commonly call it food stamps

So all of these things happen through legislation, but then the USDA, which is the United States Department of Agriculture, is primarily there are bureaucratic staffers who work there, but it's political appointments. The secretary is a political appointee and the undersecretaries and a lot of the staff are political appointees.

So with a new administration comes a vast difference between in agricultural policy in the United States. And under the Biden administration, there were a lot of directives to invest in increasing American resilience in agriculture because the COVID pandemic showed us that we really were dependent both on foreign imports as well as on large-scale food, factory farm slaughterhouses in the United States.

I was living in South Dakota at the time and there was a major outbreak of COVID at a meat processing plant in the eastern part of the state. I believe it was Smithfield Foods. And these plants are so massive and they process so much of the meat that is eaten in the United States. And I don't eat meat, but just an example of how our supply chain can be so fragile. So under the Biden administration, there was a lot, a major increase in investment and funding to support building the resiliency of American agriculture.

And I'm not saying necessarily that the Trump administration is opposed to that. I think one of the interesting things in looking at this episode is how the differences in the beliefs of his political appointees and their perspectives relating to food and agriculture. And I think it's going to be interesting to see how these differing forces who have these differing perspectives in an administration kind of shape what that looks like going forward. But yeah, that is to say at the USDA, the policy direction, there's going to be major shifts as there are in other sectors of the government.

(00:04:45):

This is Mairi, nand I'm making a side note while editing this episode a little while after recording,

but there have already been really significant and really concerning shifts at the USDA. About the beginning of February, the USDA removed a database that looked at differences across gender and minorities in farming and agriculture in the United States. And that database was wiped from the web. It's available via the Wayback Machine.

But this is something that's really, really concerning because regardless of your opinion on diversity and what you believe that means, it's absolutely essential for the resiliency of America's food system. There are so many communities and regions in the United States that depend on food systems that are based on diverse labor systems and diverse farm workers and communities.

This trend into ignoring differences in how programs are administered is a really concerning shift backward into increased racism, into segregation, into exclusion from government programs, because if you're not tracking the data – as a researcher, this is a really concerning shift. And especially as a food systems researcher, that so much data is being erased from the federal government. And luckily some of that data is being archived and is accessible elsewhere. And states like California still have state databases. But it's super, super concerning because if you are not tracking these categories, you don't understand the impacts that are happening to them. You can't administer services. You are not going to be able to document how programs are administered.

And that really, you know, could be completely inflating their efficacy if there's an entire segment of the population that you're not reaching because you're not studying them. And this is an apolitical statement. It's simply how research works. So the move that Donald has made to erase data under his administration is really concerning, as are what he has done in terms of the environment and what he's done in terms of ignoring potential areas where American agriculture is going to be more susceptible to any kind of threat.

(00:07:03) Cate

One thing that comes to mind for me is that, so I don't work in this field anymore, but I got my bachelor's degree in international relations. And while we were learning international relations, we were learning a lot of history just so that it gives context for how relations are today. And one thing I learned that really stuck with me is that governments really have a very strong vested interest in protecting their food supply because that is the number one thing that will pretty much guarantee like violent uprisings is if people are starving.

You know, we know that the American people apparently tolerate a lot. We tolerate having poor health care and racism and environmental degradation. And the American people tolerate a lot from our government, but they're not going to tolerate starving. And so governments know this,

but I'm curious to see how this is going to play out under the Trump administration because they have a vested interest in protecting the food supply. But I don't think that we really have educated people in these positions anymore because they were just appointed by Trump instead of actually being experts in their field. So I am nervous about how this is going to affect our nation's food supply.

(00:08:07): Mairi

Yeah, I will say too. So one big thing about the United States food supply and the way food subsidies work in the United States, a big difference is between commodity crops versus specialty crops. And so commodity crops are things like soy, corn, wheat, oats, sorghum, these like grains that are typically grown. And a lot of them are actually exported out of the United States.

China and other, I forget exactly the Asian countries, it might be Taiwan, but are major importers of U.S. soybeans to make soy sauce, to make other soy products. A lot of soy products that are processed and then imported into the United States and consumed elsewhere around the world are made from U.S. grown soybeans. Those are the crops that receive subsidies under the Farm Bill.

Essentially, specialty crops are actually the crops that you and I eat. They're grown all over the United States, but a lot of the crops that are eaten all over the United States that are in your grocery stores come from California and they come from the Central Valley.

And California is different than most states in that while California, they produce beef, and there used to be and still are a number of dairy farms in the state, but there's kind of been this exodus of dairy farms. Interestingly enough, one of the locations they're going is South Dakota because the regulation is more friendly to these corporations there.

But specialty crops don't receive subsidies from the US government the same way that these commodity crops do. And specialty crops are actually the foods that you and I eat. If you eat meat, commodity crops, a lot of times corn and some other grains are also fed to livestock. So you are consuming them in that matter. But specialty crop producers don't receive support from the government the same way that commodity crop producers do.

So when you're saying specialty crops, you're talking about things like like bell pepper, cucumber, zucchini, broccoli, like basically like all of the standard vegetables that you might find in a supermarket. All of your fruits, your vegetables, your nuts, your legumes that are not fed to animals, essentially, it really is pretty much all of the plants that are grown that humans eat that aren't also wheat, corn, soy, the, you know, this is not the exact list, but essentially the large grain commodities that I've mentioned. I think rice would also be considered a commodity crop.

Rice, interestingly enough, is a very large methane producer. Cows are still larger, but the specific – I'm doing a PhD at UC Berkeley and one of my cohort members is doing research on methane emissions in rice. And so it was really interesting to hear her speak this week. And it wasn't something that I knew about rice and rice is a regular part of my diet. So yeah, definitely an interesting fact.

(00:10:44): Cate

Yeah, that's news to me. I mean, I guess that's not the topic of this podcast, but I would like to learn more about that.

Mairi

Yeah, it's very cool research looking at different ways you can reduce methane emissions from rice production. But that is to say, just to give you a bit of background context about the situation that we're talking about, the Farm Bill, you know, there can be partisan influence, but it's a bipartisan effort.

Typically, there is agriculture in every single state of the United States. And I think agricultural production, despite the farmers may be having differing ideologies and there are different distinct group of – farmers don't necessarily fall into all of the stereotypes that you're thinking farmers fall into, but everybody in the United States is impacted by agri-food policy and it's in everyone's best interest typically to have a food system that is safe, that is safe for its workers, for the food that you're eating, for the environment so that we can continue to produce food.

And so just a little bit of scene setting before we kind of talk a bit more about Trump's policy. But one of the interesting facts that I also found while doing some background information gathering for this episode was that, so the United States conducts a census of agriculture every five years. And this is done by the NASS, National Agriculture Statistical Service. And they essentially, if you think of the U.S. census that's done every 10 years, it's a similar sort of process, but it's done for farms. And so that you can get an idea of what agricultural production is in the United States, and the U.S. does this because it is so important.

And specifically for farmers who have been marginalized from access, there's, you know, maybe some hesitation to trust the government, similarly as in the U.S. Census.

But an interesting fact, so it was done in 2017 and 2022, and the number of U.S. farms fell by 141,000. That is… an exceedingly huge number. And I don't have the numbers in front of me. They're public information. They're accessible to find. They're broken down by county. So if you're interested in finding county level information for where you live, you can go look this up.

But over time, this has been a trend that United States farms are getting increasingly larger in size in terms of acreage and increasingly smaller in numbers. So we're seeing this massive concentration of agricultural land and production. And like I previously mentioned, under the Biden administration during COVID, and this is a bipartisan, this should be a bipartisan issue.

And I think when I get to talking about some of Trump's political appointees, you can see that agriculture is a bipartisan issue. And so the decrease in the number of farms and this increase in concentration is specifically including foreign investment and foreign control over the United States food system is something that we see concern for in the Trump presidency.

(00:13:31): Cate

Yeah and this is something I learned I think two years ago so perhaps it's changed but at the time Bill Gates was the single largest owner of American farmland and I expect that to still be true and in fact be probably even more starkly true than it was before but you can fact check me on that. We're also seeing a concentration of land get concentrated in the hands of the very wealthy. So it's not just them amassing wealth, it's also amassing land. And it's becoming very dangerous because we shouldn't have oligarchs being the sole controller of our food supply. And we can honestly have a whole other episode about that.

(00:14:07): Mairi

This was one of the interesting things. So I was looking at a list of his political appointees that the Guardian put together and essentially their stance and their history on food and agriculture and policy.

And I do want to talk about that later, but I lived in South Dakota for a few years and Kristi Noem is now the Secretary of Homeland security and was the Governor of South Dakota. And Kristi Noem is a very polarizing figure in South Dakota. Personally, I'm not a fan. I think she disregarded the voice of South Dakotans in certain elections, particularly the legalization of recreational cannabis in 2020 when it was passed. And then she used her power as governor to effectively stop that from happening in the state. So does she support the democratic voice of the people? I don't believe so. And I say that as someone who has voted in South Dakota under Kristi Noem governorship. But apparently she. wants to reduce dependence on foreign meat packers that import meat to the United States. And she's also opposed the ownership of farmland by Chinese corporations or government,

I'm not sure, but Chinese investment in farmland in the United States. And while I do think that this specifically is likely rooted in xenophobia (and likely sinophobia as well) I think there is something to say about preventing the large scale accumulation of farmland under any particular power, whether that be a foreign investor or a a figure like Bill Gates, like you mentioned.

(00:15:30): Cate

Yeah. So this story actually played out in Guatemala in, I believe, the 1960s,where the United States was a extremely large investor of farmland in Guatemala. And we could have another podcast episode about this. But basically what happened was the Guatemalans elected a very progressive president who wanted to buy back the farmland and redistribute it to Guatemalans instead of having a foreign corporation.

And it was going to be like a really big win for a land back moment. and to allow regular people to have access to farmland. And so they were going to buy back the land and they were going to pay the amount that like the owners said it was valued on their taxes. But of course, the American corporations were undervaluing it so that they could underpay their taxes. And so when the government came to buy back the land, they were going to be underpaid. And so long story short, the United States staged a coup to overthrow this president so that they could – And this was the United Fruit Company, which turned into Chiquita Bananas. And that's the story of Chiquita Bananas, which is like the major supplier of bananas in the United States. And yeah, that company exists because they overthrew a democratically elected leader in Guatemala.

Mairi

Can I ask where you learned about this?

Cate

I learned about it in class in college. As I said, I got my bachelor's degree in international relations with a concentration in South America. And there's a book about it called Banana Cultures. I can lend it to you.

Mairi

Okay, I ask because I wrote a senior political economy thesis on this very topic, and it is published on the Providence College Digital Commons, if anyone would like to go read it.

Cate

Mairi, you've taught me a lot, but this one I learned on my own.

Mairi

But I actually do want to provide a short correction. So the coup took place in 1954, and that there had been a democratically elected government for only 10 years prior. But I believe it's not necessarily that they just devalued the land.It was any vacant holdings over 600 acres the government was going to take back and return to the peasantry so there was this element of taking the land i believe that was over 600 acres but anyway this is true and if you want to learn more about it you can go read the paper that I wrote that's published on uh the digital commons so yeah and –

Cate

When you talk about the United States staging a coup I think some people really want to deny that because they don't want to think that their government would do such a thing there are declassified CIA documents it's –

Mairi

It happened under the Eisenhower administration. The Dulles brothers were responsible for it.

Cate

Yeah, this isn't, just so we're very clear, like this isn't a conspiracy theory. This is declassified CIA documents and you can look into it if you're interested.

Mairi

Yeah, that's funny that you mentioned that because I actually do know quite a bit about that event.

Cate

I have the book on it.

Mairi

I wonder if I cited it. But anyway, getting back to current United States agri-food policy, and I think it is important to have that context of the United States has always, through its foreign policy, has interfered directly in the politics of other countries due to interests of American corporations related to agri-food.

So the United States is not necessarily about supporting people. It's about providing protection to the interests of corporate food. And, you know, it's helpful to see a shift against that under the Biden administration, but it shouldn't be a partisan issue.

So getting back to contemporary agri-food policy, Trump's policies have essentially been bad for farmers, and they are bad for farmers, and a lot of farmers are concerned. So if you're going to deport undocumented workers. So much of the farm worker labor force in this country is run by migrant undocumented workers who are working incredibly, incredibly hard doing labor that personally I don't want to do because it is so difficult and earning very little money for it.

Farm workers who are able to become farm owners, it's very difficult in California because land is so inaccessible, but there are systems that are working to help with that. Specifically in the — and they help farm workers become farm owners through very innovative and interesting land access and legal ownership frameworks that they're working with in order to make this happen.

But you can make so much more money as a farm owner than a farm worker. So maybe as a farm worker, you might be able to make 30, $40,000 a year, probably maybe up to 80,000 if you're paid really well, if you own the farm. And I'm not sure exactly of the acreage, but the same amount of acreage that you would work, you can make about $800,000 a year.

And then, you know, a lot of times you're employing your partner or your parents or if you have siblings. So you're keeping that money directly within your family. There's so much wealth that is made off of the labor of farm workers that goes straight into the pockets of these large corporations.

(00:20:07): Cate

Honestly, $30,000 and $40,000 a year sounds generous for some. I know that migrant farm workers earn sometimes like way, way, way well below minimum wage. And they're really getting screwed, but they're the backbone of the U.S. food supply. And if you deport all of them, the food supply chain will be destabilized.

Mairi

They're 45 percent of agricultural workers in the United States, which is an absurd number – that, that's half of the labor force.

So this was a quote from a Guardian article again about Trump's immigration and trade policies and that during his first White House bid, he met Central Valley growers in person to hear about their concerns around water access. And this is an issue in California that water access is difficult. This is talking about how there were restrictions to accessing water due to efforts to protect fish and wildlife. And I think that's super important and isn't something that should disappear.

There is a system in California. And if you don't live in California and you don't want to hear about California agriculture, you don't think it applies to you. It does. Because like I was just talking about specialty crops that we eat. If you shop at the grocery store in the United States, if you're not sourcing your food solely from the farmer's market or from local farms or eating entirely locally, if you're shopping at the grocery store, you're buying food that came from California.

It matters across the entire country. There is a legislative framework called SGMA, so the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. And large-scale farmers are buying up lands and they're pumping it for things like almonds.

So these smaller farmers who don't have wells that go as deep, their wells are running dry or they're not able to access water to sustain themselves to water their crops because corporations are buying up these larger amounts of farmland. And if you have the money to drill a deeper well, so 150 feet versus 50 feet, you are able to get the water.

And so these differences in pump depths are really exacerbating the inequity. Water rights in the West are also a very, I don't study them. I'm familiar with them at the surface level. And if you're not just to say water rights in the West are, there are senior rights and junior rights based on when you received your land, essentially when you got your land that was stolen from the indigenous peoples who lived here. So if you stole it sooner, you have better water rights and they're very complicated.

I know in Colorado, every single inch of rain that falls is owned by someone. So you're not necessarily allowed to collect water that falls on your land. Although there was some state legislation that was passed to allow a certain amount of rain water that was allowed to be collected. And one of the teachers from my permaculture training was involved in having that pass in Colorado. But just to say the environmental situation and the precarity of our food supply is really important and going to see what Trump does under that.

Mairi

On January 31st 2025 Trump actually ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to open the two dams in northern California to release water which the immediate impact of the intended amount of cubic feet that was going to be released would have potentially been devastating and damaged ecosystems downstream that weren't prepared for that sudden influx. And so the amount was ultimately reduced but this was a political move that ultimately served no purpose and will probably actually be harming farmers in California later on this season because there's going to be a decreased amount of water in the reservoirs, potentially from snow melt and from the rains, that will be able to be used for irrigation.

And none of the water in California that's released has any potential of ever making it to Southern California. There is no mechanism for it to travel there. So this claimed victory on the part of Trump is really just an early indication of the potentially devastating environmental and agricultural impacts that his politically driven policies will have on the United States food system.

(00:23:59):

So anyway, essentially, if Trump cuts social policies like I was talking about earlier, this is going to be bad for food assistance programs. And when people are starving, like Catie was talking about, that is when you get more social unrest, which is not something that billionaires want, really.

They don't want social unrest. it's actually pretty much a guarantee like when people are starving that is when everyone will have a violent uprising it's not a political issue everybody has to eat and so the food supply chain really should be of concern to everybody and just –

(00:24:31): Cate

A little plug in here this is the time where i'm really starting to think about planting a garden a because it is late winter and it's time to plant like your early spring late winter garden depending on what zone you live in but also the food supply chain is at risk I don't like to be fear mongering, I don't like when news anchors or news outlets are like overly fear mongering but I don't think this is fear mongering, I think that the food supply chain is fragile and I'm very concerned and so I'm starting to think about just having a little bit more self-sufficiency in terms of the food that I have access to and so I'm going to really really plan my garden carefully this year and if you want help with that we can help you

Mairi

Yeah, you can visit us at eatingrooted.com for more information about how. But just to get back to the context that we're talking about, Yeah, I think growing food is super important and being able to participate in a local economy helps strengthen your community and where you live.

Just to finish up a thought from earlier, so… Talking about water and all of this context in terms of California, there's this idea that environmental regulations are drowning farmers and they're the thing responsible for these deficits. But there are these broader policies about who owns water and resources and who has the right to it. And like we were talking before about the consolidation of farmland in the United States, it's these larger investors who have the ability to buy land and to have the capital to dig deeper wells.

Because in California, water rights are associated with owning land. If you can drill the well, you have access to the water. Even though that water flows, groundwater is not stagnant. It moves with the landscape. So if you are drilling more than your share, you are taking it from someone else. And so consolidation of farmland comes with consolidation of water rights. Specifically in California, where so much of the food that we eat in the United States is grown. And it'll be interesting to see under Trump's presidency how this is impacted, because I don't think that his presidency is specifically against consolidation of farmland. They're opposed to foreign investors.

(00:26:32):

But, you know, overall, I think that both of

those things could be areas of concern. Just another fact, so Trump's policies are going to hurt American farms by deporting migrant workers. Tariffs also cost American farmers money because foreign governments don't want to buy their goods. So then there's less money in taxes because their revenues go down. And because the way the Farm Bill is structured in the United States and so much of our exports are the commodity goods and the commodity foods are the ones that are subsidized, specialty crops don't receive subsidies, the cumulative cost to the United States under Trump's economic and agricultural policies were essentially $59 billion during his last term, because it was the cost of the lost money in taxes, as well as the cost in aid that's given out. So effectively $59 billion was the cost to the American taxpayers and economy because of these policies. It's pretty bad.

Cate

That's really horrifying.

Mairi

Yeah, right. And exports, we rely on other nations. China imported so much of our soybeans and because they decided that they weren't interested in continuing to be such a significant consumer under the last presidency, the rest of the world isn't able to consume that excess. So export partners are not necessarily transferable. Like we have relationships with specific countries and there are markets that have developed over a long time.

And this impacts people who live in rural communities on the ground. So this effect is… It impacts all of us from the prices at the grocery store to the environment that we live in. So for tariffs coming into the United States, it hurts American food systems because other countries don't want to import our goods. And it's also more expensive for American consumers to import goods from other countries. So exports are hurt and imports are more expensive. And there's a lot of foods that are made in the United States that are manufactured here, like chocolate. You can't grow chocolate in the United States. You have to import it. Like the price is going to go up. yeah and on this vein of thought we have these huge commodity crop producers and if they don't have a place to put their commodity crop it ends up just getting wasted because you could think like oh maybe they could just donate it to food banks or blah blah blah but there's not really that infrastructure in place in order to process and take in all that food elsewhere and so it creates a huge amount of waste

(00:28:50): Cate

Yeah.

(00:28:50): Mairi

So what happens actually is that, I believe during COVID, farmers were burning crops in the fields and they were just killing their animals because they weren't able to take them to market and they weren't able to pay to keep them alive. So that's devastating.

Cate

They were dumping truckloads of milk just out on the ground.

Mairi

Yeah, because they might get subsidies from the US government. And so their bottom dollar is protected, but there's not infrastructure in place to actually rescue that food Well, this is the thing is that to some extent there is. The United States has about, I don't know if it's $2 billion worth of cheese. But it's just cheese.

(00:29:25):Mairi

I think there's other, the US government is a large purchaser of commodity surpluses. So the United States government gives subsidies to commodity producers through price floors essentially where the price cannot go below a minimum amount and if it does then the government and through crop insurance you know they are offset but the government is also a really large purchaser of commodity goods so cheese yes the U.S government has so much cheese the dairy industry is very strong in the United States. The US government also is a large purchaser of commodity goods for in-kind aid.

The United States, as it does, it has laws about the kinds of aid that it'll give. And when it sends food aid to other countries, it has to be sent on US ships. So that's more expensive and it can take more time. So by the time the food gets there, a lot of times it's no longer good. And there's also been a lot of research done about how in-kind food aid– So in-kind means that it's food itself. Other types of food aid is that you could give people cash.

And usually when people are starving and there is currently major disruptions and they need food aid, it's a lot of times because political instability or they're not able to afford food. Not that the food doesn't exist, although that sometimes has been the case in famines in the past.

But if you give people money, they're able to buy food and support their local economy. Whereas if you import a bunch of food that's not good and not culturally appropriate from the United States and just dump it there, you further destabilize the local economy. But you know what? It's good for US farmers.

Anyway, the costs of US food aid, that's a cost to the US government when they increase production and then they just purchase it to subsidize US agriculture. But the costs of seed and fertilizer are also going to go up. And those are inputs for most of the commodity crop production in the United States.

(00:31:10):

All right. Anyway, so just a little bit, one kind of final thing I wanted to talk through. So we talked a little bit about US food policy, how commodity crop and specialty crop subsidies work, why California is so important, the United States food system, a little bit about how investment from large scale investors in agriculture is destabilizing food systems, both through how that impacts access to water rights and as well as how that impacts the stability and resilience of the food system.

A few people I want to run through and talked a little bit about Trump's staff. So his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, she started working as a lobbyist. I'm looking at an article by The Guardian. But in 2017, she represented the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. And she also then represented tobacco companies and packaged food companies like Kellogg's, Kraft Heinz, and Nestle. So, she has a large interest and experience with processed foods. This was interesting to me.

Elon Musk, as we all know, in January 2024, Starlink and SpaceX launched a partnership with John Deere, the tractor company, to provide internet connectivity to the company's farm machinery. So that's from The Guardian as well.

And that's a very… interesting development. If you don't know, if you go to North Dakota, there are these massive, massive, massive corn and wheat fields, and they are harvested by massive combines that have people in them, but that are essentially operated by GPS coordination. And essentially they just kind of run and they know when to turn. And this idea of internet connectivity and GPS navigation of farm machinery is not new. Agriculture is industrial, but I think this is an interesting development. It's just more billionaires getting involved with the U.S. food supply. It's Bill Gates and Elon Musk both.

(00:33:04):

Yeah.

(00:33:04):

The Secretary of Agriculture, so this is interesting. So she founded a think tank to advocate for Trump's policies in 2021, but she's called for Congress to restrict China and other foreign investors' ability to own U.S. agricultural land. And like I was saying, I've also heard that there, I believe it's Saudi Arabia, owns a lot of land in the Southwest and they extract a lot of water to grow alfalfa to feed their cattle. They buy land in the U.S. because the water is so much cheaper here. It's cheaper to grow alfalfa in the United States and ship it across the world to feed cattle there. And that's at the expense of the American environment. So I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing to restrict large investment, whether it's foreign or domestic in agriculture. I think resiliency does not come to the food system through concentration

(00:33:50):

It comes through smaller diffuse operations and local control. So there's more. I highly recommend looking at this, but… It's just interesting to see who is going to be in government and their different perspectives. There's a Stanford physician who's conducted research on poverty, food insecurity, and nutritional outcomes in children and adults, obesity and diabetes, and school meals.

And apparently in 2004, he wrote a paper for the USDA on the effectiveness of school breakfasts, which is really important. And in 2014, though, wrote a study on how to ban on SNAP. So that's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. How banning purchases using SNAP funds of sugar-sweetened beverages could reduce obesity and type 2 diabetes. And this is something that I have an issue with because… he's a physician, he's not a behavioral economist, and he's also not an ethicist. And you should not be dictating how people spend their money. The reason that people on SNAP purchase sugary sweetened beverages is because it's cheaper. It's just simply cheaper to purchase unhealthy foods than it is to purchase healthy foods. And I think we need to be looking at, again, this corporate control of the American food system as that foundational issue, rather than trying to please people's individual practices.

So I think in sum, I am concerned about how the Trump presidency is going to impact the agri-food system. I do think he has a mix of people who do have experience, possibly questionable, but some of it legitimate, in the food system.

And he has a mix of people who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, like RFK also in his administration. So I think it'll be interesting to see how this mix of perspectives and beliefs actually serves to benefit the American people. I think the fact that we're not being communicated any health information is absolutely concerning, but we'll see. I'm also hopeful that a lot of the investment that was made under the Biden administration, which was upwards of a billion dollars in increasing local and regional resiliency, hopefully the work that was done will continue to be beneficial and to serve local food systems in that the efforts that have been ongoing for many, many years will continue to serve all kinds of communities over the next four years.

Cate

Yeah, it's kind of wait and see and see what happens. But I also feel like I've seen enough to be concerned.

Mairi

Yeah, I'm glad that I live in California. Like the food is grown here, you know, so we have a really robust system. The access to local foods or regional foods, I should say, the local can be considered up to 150 miles away. But there is such a strong network of farmers markets in the Bay Area and in San Francisco. And different farms throughout the region that they travel to come here. So I think, feel very happy to be living in an area where the food is fresh and grown locally. And yeah, I don't take that for granted.

Cate

Yeah. The farmer's markets in California really do hit different. It's always so fun to go to those when I visit you. The grocery store produce section is just, it's just good too.

Mairi

Yeah.

Cate

Here on Long Island, it's a little bit more basic.

Mairi

The farm stands in the summer are good, but... Yes, seasonal though.

Cate

Yeah, as it should be. It's not natural to have blueberries in the winter, so...

Mairi

No, it's seasonal in California too. It's just you can grow food year round and there's different seasons for different foods, but there's always something.

Cate

Yeah.

Mairi

All right. I think that just about covers everything we wanted to talk about today. So thank you for listening.

Cate

Yeah, this is stuff we want to continue to be paying attention to and thinking about how these policies impact farmers and impact all of the access that we have to food and to a healthy and safe environment. We're definitely going to be keeping our eyes on this and just stay tuned.

Mairi

All right. We will catch you next time. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Eat Rooted. We hope you've learned something today and are inspired to get started, no matter how imperfectly. I’m Mairi

Cate

And I'm Cate. We can help you design the garden of your dreams. Visit us at eatingrooted.com to learn how.

Mairi

Check out the blog to learn more about composting, read the show notes, and sign up for the email list to never miss an episode. Please remember to like, subscribe, share, and leave a review. And don't forget to put your values on your plate.