Corporate giants vs. the family farm: New initiative targets the monopolies pillaging rural America

The American family farm is being systematically wiped out as corporate monopolies are taking over our food supply. That’s why Joe Maxwell of the Farm Action Fund has launched the bipartisan Rural Independence Initiative — to take on what BlazeTV host Daniel Horowitz calls the pillaging of rural America. “We just released a paper along with the launch of the Rural Independence Initiative, a bipartisan, cross-partisan organization, the only political organization that’s pro-healthy food, pro-farmer, pro-rural America,” Maxwell tells Horowitz. “We want candidates that will fight for markets — fair and free markets — healthy food, and economic independence from monopoly control,” he explains, pointing out that he doesn’t care whether they’re Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. Maxwell says this is because “both parties are working against the people and for corporate monopoly oligarchy control of our economy.” “And therefore, what we eat, what we can raise, how we’re going to produce it, and then ultimately control of our government,” he adds. “Exactly, because if you look at the farm bills, which are always overwhelmingly bipartisan, they’re pushed by both parties, the same monopolization of the land, obsessive support for very specific things, very specific crops, often not even for food,” Horowitz agrees. “So, they’ll say, ‘I’m for rural America, America’s farms, America’s heartland.’ But the reality is, they’re all on the same side. They’re all against us,” he adds. And while Maxwell is fighting for rural America, what he’s fighting for isn’t special treatment, but fairness. “A rural worker will make about 24,000 a year less than the average metropolitan worker. ... Rural grandparents will see more of their grandchildren die before the age of 1 than metropolitan grandparents, and rural grandchildren will lose their grandparents three years earlier than metropolitan,” he explains. “So, the policy has to begin with a lens towards representing people, individual businesses — whether that’s a meat packer or a light manufacturer in rural America or whether that’s the farmer,” he continues. “We have to break the grip that these companies have on these sectors to restore the wealth and the quality of life for rural Americans.”