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Blog | January 19, 2021

A Toolkit for Congress to Tackle the Food Monopoly Crisis

Our partners at Family Farm Action Alliance have developed a comprehensive toolkit for the 117th Congress to tackle the dangerous levels of consolidation in today’s food system. The toolkit sets out a course of action for Congress to implement six key points of intervention based on their report, The Food System: Concentration and Its Impacts:

  1. Curbing Globalized Concentration: We must ensure the power to make decisions about the agrifood system lies in the hands of those who produce and consume food directly.
  2. Implementing Anti-Racist Food and Farm Policy: Historic discrimination and exploitation of BIPOC farmers, ranchers, and workers must be actively addressed and remedied.
  3. Prioritizing Resilience, Not Efficiency: Policy to increase competition, independence, social justice, and success of smaller entities will ensure a long-lasting, resilient agrifood system.
  4. Redefining the Status Quo: Everything from property rights, to feeding livestock, to rural development must be rethought in ways that acknowledge social and ecological consequences.
  5. Supporting Local and Regional Food Systems: As we rein in the power held by industrial agricultural corporations, we must simultaneously build a support system for farmers, ranchers, workers, and communities.
  6. Transitioning to a Just and Resilient Agrifood System: As we transition to a brighter food system, we must not pull out the rug beneath farmers and ranchers stuck in the endless cycles of contracting and debt imposed by industrial agricultural interests.

To download the toolkit or read the The Food System report, visit Family Farm Action Alliance’s website.

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