Warren unveils plan to target corporate agriculture

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday unveiled plans to target corporate agricultural, pledging to break up monopolies and support family farmers, as part of her 2020 presidential campaign platform. 

Warren, in a statement outlining her proposal, criticized federal regulators for having “consistently favored the interests of multinational corporations and big business lobbyists over the interests of family farmers.”

{mosads}She pledged to “address consolidation in the agriculture sector,” something she said is “leaving family farmers with fewer choices, thinner margins, and less independence.” Warren pointed specifically to Tyson, Dow-Dupont and Syngenta-ChemChina, saying regulators have allowed companies like them “to crush competition and seize control over key markets.”

Her plan was first revealed exclusively to the Des Moines Register, a newspaper in Iowa, which is home to a significant agriculture industry and will also kick off the presidential nominating contests with the Iowa caucuses next year.

Warren said she would appoint “trustbusters” to review and reverse “anti-competitive mergers” and said she would commit to breaking up “big agribusinesses that have become vertically integrated and that control more and more of the market.”

She also said in her proposal that the changes she plans to make to the agriculture industry go beyond consolidation. 

“Consolidation is choking family farms, but there’s a whole lot of other ways in which big business has rigged the rules in their favor and against family farmers. I will fight to change those rules,” Warren wrote in a Medium post.

The Massachusetts senator said she would support a “national right-to-repair law” that would enable farmers to fix their equipment without being forced to rely on an authorized agent. She also said she would support a law that would restrict foreign ownership of U.S. agriculture companies and farmland.

“I want Washington to work for family farmers again, not just for the agribusiness executives pocketing multi-million dollar bonuses or the Wall Street traders sitting at their desks speculating on the price of commodities,” Warren said in the statement. “I want family farmers to be fairly rewarded for their hard work. That is how we build an economy that works for everyone.”