A Fair Farm Bill For All

What You’ll Learn From This Report

Our current food system is not inevitable. Decades of misguided farm policy designed by agribusiness and unchecked corporate consolidation have wreaked havoc on family farmers, food workers, rural communities, and public health. Today, one in seven households with children is food-insecure; median farm income is negative; slaughterhouse workers suffer double the rate of reported injuries and illnesses than workers in the manufacturing sector as a whole; and rural communities continue to decline as factory farms expand.¹U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Economic Research Service (ERS). “Food insecurity for households with children rose in 2020, disrupting decade-long decline.” February 7, 2022; USDA ERS. “Farm household income forecast for 2021 and 2022 — February 2022 Update.” February 4, 2022; U.S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2020 Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. Available at https://www.bls.gov/iif/soii-data.htm#newsrelease; Food & Water Watch (FWW). The Economic Cost of Food Monopolies: The Hog Bosses. May 2022.

Independent farmers have been sold out by agricultural policy that favors corporate interests above farmers, consumers, and the environment. Deregulation has left farmers vulnerable to wild swings in the prices of commodities like corn, wheat, and milk — wheat has sold below the cost of production for 9 of the last 10 years.²USDA ERS. Commodities Costs and Returns. Available at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/commodity-costs-and-returns/commodity-costs-and-returns/#Historical%20Costs%20and%20Returns:%20Milk. Accessed June 2022. Meanwhile, agribusinesses reap huge profits by purchasing artificially cheap commodities and processing them into factory farm feed, ethanol, and food additives.³Ayazi, Hossein and Elsadig Elsheikh. Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. “The US Farm Bill: Corporate Power and Structural Racism in the United States Food System.” October 2015 at 26 to 27. 

Small and mid-sized farms are at the mercy of agribusinesses, which have gotten larger and more powerful through decades of mergers and acquisitions. Today, just a handful of companies control the market for almost every agricultural product. This means lower income for farmers and higher prices for consumers.⁴USDA. Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). “Packers and Stockyards Division: Annual Report 2018.” August 2019 at 9; Kelloway, Claire and Sarah Miller. Open Markets Institute. “Food and Power: Addressing Monopolization in America’s Food System.” March 2019 at 2 and 6; Mitchell, Stacy. Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “Walmart’s Monopolization of Local Grocery Markets.” June 2019 at 3 to 4; FWW. “Factory Farm Nation: 2020 Edition.” April 2020 at 8 to 9. 

A growing movement of farmers and consumers is working to rebuild local food systems and put more profit directly in the hands of farmers. But only structural changes at the federal level can create equity in our food system. The Farm Bill, rewritten every five years, offers a critical opportunity to fundamentally transform federal farm and food policy. Instead of catering to agribusiness’s greed for cheap raw materials, the next Farm Bill should ensure functional, fair markets. A fair Farm Bill would let the people who grow our food earn a decent living, practice environmental stewardship, and rebuild the infrastructure that consumers need to access sustainably grown, regionally produced food.

Whether or not you farm for a living, the Farm Bill impacts your daily life. It determines which crops qualify for federal farm safety net programs, thereby creating incentives to grow particular foods. It funds conservation practices to protect farmland for future generations — while also giving handouts to factory farms.⁵FWW analysis of EQIP payments, using data received from the Environmental Working Group.  It also funds the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formally known as the food stamp program, to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.

The Farm Bill shapes what food is grown, how it is produced, where it is sold, and who can afford to buy it.

For example, current farm policy favors large, industrial-scale agriculture and the overproduction of commodity crops. This is in part because major commodities like corn and soybeans are eligible under safety net programs such as federal crop insurance, which buffers farm income from losses due to disasters or low prices.⁶Shields, Dennis A. Congressional Research Service (CRS). “Federal Crop Insurance: Background.” R40532. August 13, 2015 at summary; Schnepf, Randy. CRS. “2018 Farm Bill Primer: Marketing Assistance Loan Program.” IF11162. April 3, 2019 at 2. Yet many varieties of fruits and vegetables are ineligible for crop insurance, increasing the risks of growing these “specialty” crops.⁷Rosa, Isabel and Renée Johnson. CRS. “Federal Crop Insurance: Specialty Crops.” R45459. Updated January 14, 2019 at 9; Smith, Trevor J. “Corn, cows, and climate change: How federal agricultural subsidies enable factory farming and exacerbate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.” Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy. Vol. 9, Iss. 1. March 2019 at 43 to 44. It is no coincidence that the main ingredients in the typical American diet feature corn and soybeans, both as food additives and as corn-finished meat. The Farm Bill keeps these inputs cheap and abundant for corporations that want them.

As long as corporations maintain a stranglehold over our food system, farmers will not get fair prices for their crops and livestock, and consumers will have less access to nutritious, affordable food.

2018 Farm Bill Titles

What is the Farm Bill?

The Farm Bill establishes the policies and government supports for a range of U.S. agricultural priorities. It is divided into sections (called titles) that cover specific program areas. The Farm Bill is reauthorized (rewritten and voted on by Congress) every five years.⁸CRS. “2018 Farm Bill Primer: Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018.” IF11126. March 2019 at 1.

The 2018 Farm Bill had 12 titles. Historically, most Farm Bill spending — three-quarters in the 2018 bill — goes to the Nutrition title, which funds SNAP. There are also titles that offer credit to farmers, fund conservation programs, and encourage rural development, among many other programs.⁹Ibid. at 1​ and 2​.

The most controversial title is Commodities, which addresses the raw materials of our industrial food system — mainly corn, wheat, and soybeans, but also cotton and other major grain and oilseed crops. The Commodities title provides crop insurance and farm payments to protect farmers against declining revenue from price losses or weather events.¹⁰CRS. “Preparing for the Next Farm Bill.” R47057. March 31, 2022 at 3: Schnepf, Randy. CRS. “2018 Farm Bill Primer: Title I Commodity Programs.” IF11164. April 3, 2019 at 2, table I.

Critics across the political spectrum point to the Commodities title as a posterchild for government waste. Although the title incentivizes the overproduction of feed crops, simply eliminating farm payments and insurance programs is not a roadmap to a fair food system. Instead of cutting the safety net for struggling farmers, we need to fix it to require organic regenerative practices and expand it to include more specialty crops. To begin, we need to understand the political and social history that brought us where we are.

The three biggest trends in agriculture over the past four decades have been the rise of corporate consolidation, the shredding of agricultural supply management, and the decline of independent, family-scale farms. These trends are not coincidental, but part of a coordinated effort by multinational agribusinesses to squeeze more revenue from the food system — at the expense of farmers and rural communities.

Foodopoly

Corporate leaders strive to amass market power through predatory practices. But for much of the twentieth century, our legislatures and courts served as a check to their ambitions. The “trust-busting” era saw federal antitrust legislation designed to prevent agricultural corporations from getting too big and protect the interests of farmers, suppliers, and small businesses. Courts also ruled against agribusinesses that engaged in predatory practices, in some cases even forcing them to break up, as in the case of supermarket giant A&P.¹¹Lauck, Jon. “Toward an agrarian antitrust: A new direction for agricultural law.” North Dakota Law Review. Vol. 75, No. 3. 1999 at 450 to 453 and 457 to 463; Booher, Stephen R. “Enforcement of antitrust proscriptions against price discrimination and price cutting by chain stores — The A&P case.” Ohio State Law Journal. Vol. 17, Iss. 2. 1956 at 208 to 211.

So corporate leaders tried a different approach: swaying economists and politicians to embrace a pro-corporate approach to antitrust, packaged as free market economics. “Economic efficiency” trumped concerns for farmer or consumer welfare. These and other neoliberal principles found fertile ground within the Reagan administration but were embraced by subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations alike. For instance, while the federal government blocked more than a thousand mergers and acquisitions between 1950 and 1980, it has taken little action since.¹²Robinson, William J. and Ashley M. Koley. “Antitrust enforcement against oligopolies.” Antitrust Law Daily. October 2019 at 1; Lauck (1999) at 456 to 457 and 500 to 504; Mitchell, Stacy. Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “The rise and fall of the word ‘monopoly’ in American life.” Atlantic. June 20, 2017. Even the Obama administration, which talked a big antitrust game, enabled some of the largest agribusiness megamergers in history, including Kraft-Heinz.¹³Food & Power. [Database]. “Mergers & Acquisitions.” Available at https://www.foodandpower.net/mergers-acquisitions. Accessed June 2022 and on file with FWW.

With federal courts and regulators blessing corporate consolidation, the companies that buy, process, and sell raw agricultural products — meatpackers, food processors, and food retailers — ballooned. Mergermania spread across the food supply chain. Today, just four companies sell 85 percent of corn and 76 percent of soybean seeds (see Fig. 1). Four companies control 84 percent of the pesticide market. And the onslaught of recent mergers between seed and agrochemical companies has given just three companies top positions in both the seed and agrochemical markets, with Bayer-Monsanto the dominant player.¹⁴Mooney, Pat. ETC Group. “Blocking the Chain: Industrial Food Chain Concentration, Big Data Platforms and Food Sovereignty Solutions.” October 2018 at 4 to 8; K​​elloway and Miller (2019) at 6 to 7.

At harvest, commodity farmers sell into markets where just four firms control 90 percent of grain trading.¹⁵K​​elloway and Miller (2019) at 6 to 8. Hog farmers also face reduced competition, now that four companies slaughter over two-thirds of all hogs.¹⁶USDA AMS. “Packers and Stockyards Division: Annual Report 2019.” August 2020 at 9. Many hog farmers are no longer independent but instead work under production contracts with the powerful processing corporations.

A similar model of contract farming dominates the poultry industry, accounting for 96 percent of all broiler (meat) chickens slaughtered in the United States.¹⁷Lawrence, John D. “Hog marketing practices and competition questions.” Choices. Vol. 25, No. 2. 2nd Quarter 2010 at 2 to 3 and 5; Sexton, Richard. “Market power, misconceptions, and modern agricultural markets.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Vol. 95, Iss. 2. January 2013 at 6 to 7; MacDonald, James et al. USDA ERS. “Contracts, Markets, and Prices.” Agricultural Economic Report No. 837. November 2004 at 41. Poultry companies are the most vertically integrated of all meat processors, meaning the same company owns everything from the birds to the feed and medicine to the slaughterhouses. Farmers, however, are required to build and upgrade costly barns and other infrastructure and are burdened with massive waste disposal and debt.¹⁸FWW analysis of USDA. National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). “Quick Stats.” Available at https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov. Accessed August 2019; MacDonald, James M. USDA. “Technology, Organization, and Financial Performance in U.S. Broiler Production.” Economic Information Bulletin Number 126. June 2014 at 1 and 15; Andrews, David and Timothy J. Kautza. Report of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. “Impact of industrial farm animal production on rural communities.” 2008 at iv.

Reduced competition impacts farmers and consumers alike. Take pork, for example: U.S. farmers today earn $2 less per pound of pork than they did in 1982 (adjusted for inflation). That’s a third of the value earned in 1982. But as consumers, we are paying only around $1 less per pound at the grocery checkout. Pork processors and retailers capture the other dollar.¹⁹USDA ERS. “Pork values and spreads.” Available at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/meat-price-spreads. Accessed August 2021.

Waves of mergers and the rise of cutthroat competitors like Walmart have also transformed the grocery retail industry. Today, just four companies take in over three-quarters of all U.S. grocery sales. Walmart alone gobbles up $1 out of every $3. Meanwhile, local shops have shuttered and many communities, rural and urban alike, lack access to fresh food.²⁰Fernandez, Cecilia. IBISWorld. “Supermarkets & Grocery Stores in the US.” US Industry (NAICS) report 44511. November 2020 at 9 and 13 to 14; Mitchell (2019) at 3 to 4; Saitone, Tina L. and Richard J. Sexton. “Concentration and Consolidation in the U.S. Food Supply Chain: The Latest Evidence and Implications for Consumers, Farmers, and Policymakers.” Economic Review. Special Issue 2017 at 36; FWW analysis of U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns. Available at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html. Accessed June 2021.

Corporate farm bills

Agribusinesses used their growing market power to both undercut competitors and rewrite the rules of the game, including the U.S. Farm Bills. At least 600 companies spent over half a billion dollars lobbying for the 2014 Farm Bill alone. This includes leading corporations in trade, banking, transportation, and energy.²¹Ayazi and Elsheik (2015) at 34.

The first Farm Bill, passed in 1933 as part of the New Deal, was the most comprehensive federal intervention into the farm economy. Its goal was to free farmers from the boom-and-bust cycles driving thousands of farms to foreclosure. Like farmers today, farmers of the 1920s faced chronic overproduction that depressed crop prices. Farmers have few options when prices decline; they may try to grow even more to squeeze out some income, even planting on vulnerable land or implementing intensive practices. By the 1930s, topsoil had so severely eroded that dust storms swept away what little remained.²²Graddy-Lovelace, Garrett and Adam Diamond. “From supply management to agricultural subsidies — and back again? The U.S. Farm Bill & agrarian (in)viability.” Journal of Rural Studies. Vol. 50. February 2017 at 76.

The 1933 Farm Bill (named the Agricultural Adjustment Act) directly tackled overproduction by establishing a system of supply management. This and subsequent Farm Bills initiated voluntary programs like acreage reduction to encourage farmers to ease back production in exchange for price supports.²³
​Rasmussen, Wayne D. et al. USDA ERS. “A Short History of Agricultural Adjustment, 1933-75.” Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 391. March 1976 at 2 to 6; ​​McGranahan, Devan A. et al. “A historical primer on the US farm bill: Supply management and conservation policy.” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. Vol. 68, No. 3. May/June 2013 at 67A to 69A. The central goal of many of these programs was to achieve parity — a crop price that covered farmers’ costs of production while providing a living wage comparable to that of non-farm families.²⁴Teigen, Lloyd D. USDA ERS. “Agricultural Parity: Historical Review and Alternative Calculations.” Agricultural Economic Report No. 571. June 1987 at iii.

Supply management programs can cost taxpayers little to nothing, as the U.S. government essentially purchased surplus grains during bumper crop years and sold them back into the market during lean ones.²⁵Graddy-Lovelace and Diamond (2017) at 76. And farmers and consumers alike benefit from stable crop prices year after year.

But agribusinesses hated supply management. Grain purchasers challenged supply management programs from the very beginning as threats to their control over the market. Nevertheless, supply management remained a central pillar of Farm Bills into the midtwentieth century.²⁶Ayazi and Elsheik (2015) at 24; McGranahan (2013) at 68A to 70A; Rasmussen (1976) at 4 and 6 to 14.

After World War II, the Eisenhower administration turned to global trade as a way to soak up crop surpluses. In a deviation from New Deal farm policies, the administration urged farmers to “get big or get out,” seeing expanding export markets as a way to increase U.S. global influence.²⁷McGranahan (2013) at 68A to 70A. This shift toward free market ideology was no accident; corporate agribusinesses spent decades consolidating market power and growing political influence. Having the ears of Congress and officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), agribusinesses succeeded in chipping away supply management programs from mid-century onward.²⁸Ibid.; Ayazi and Elsheik (2015) at 24; Rasmussen (1976) at 23 to 26.

But export markets proved unreliable; sudden drops in demand for U.S. grain ushered in new farm crises and foreclosures. Nevertheless, deregulation of farm markets intensified, culminating in the 1996 “Freedom to Farm” Bill. The bill’s proponents, including agribusiness, suggested that farmers would adjust to market conditions, growing only what was needed. Cargill public relations executives claimed that “outdated” farm programs needed to be scrapped.²⁹Tai, Wendy, Linda Thrane and Rob Johnson. “Plowed under, the end of farm subsidies may be near.” The Spokesman-Review. December 31, 1995. The 1996 Farm Bill enshrined the false expectation that the market would replace federal farm payment programs.³⁰Effland, Anne B. W. USDA ERS. “U.S. Farm Policy: The First 200 Years.” Agricultural Outlook. March 2000 at 25.

Reality was much different. Deregulation left farmers vulnerable to market fluctuations caused by agribusiness buyers as well as the weather; the 1996 Farm Bill soon became known as “Freedom to Fail.”³¹Burns, Greg. “Some of the nation’s farmers have found a dependable crop that always gives a high yield: The federal subsidy.” Chicago Tribune. April 21, 2002. When supply management policies ended, farmers made the rational decision for their individual businesses: They planted more. Farmers harvested 7.5 million more acres of corn and 7.6 million more acres of soybeans in 1997 than in 1995.³²FWW analysis of USDA NASS. “Quick Stats.”  The influx of grain onto the market caused the price of grains to collapse. Farmers planted additional acres to try to make up for lost income, which then depressed prices further.³³Beitel, Karl. “U.S. farm subsidies and the farm economy: Myths, realities, alternatives.” Food First / Institute for Food and Development Policy. Vol. 11, No. 3. Summer 2005 at 2 to 3.  From 1996 to 1998, corn and wheat prices dropped roughly 50 percent, requiring massive direct government payments to keep farmers afloat (see Fig. 3).³⁴Scott, Robert. Economic Policy Institute. “Exported to Death: The Failure of Agricultural Deregulation.” July 1, 1999 at 1; Ayazi and Elsheik (2015) at 24 to 27. 

In fact, expenditures for farm programs spiked dramatically — rising from $7.3 billion in 1996 to $12.4 billion in 1998, and then soaring to $21.5 billion in 1999, with expenditures remaining above $22 billion in 2000 and 2001.³⁵USDA ERS. “Direct Government Payments by Program, United States, 1996-2009.” Accessed July 8, 2011 and on file with FWW.  Even with these payments, U.S. net farm income declined by 16.5 percent from 1996 to 2001.³⁶Ray, Daryll et al. University of Tennessee. Agricultural Policy Analysis Center. “Rethinking U.S. Agricultural Policy: Changing Course to Secure Farmer Livelihoods Worldwide.” September 2003 at 9.  In the 2002 Farm Bill, Congress voted to make these “emergency” payments permanent rather than address the underlying cause of the price drop: overproduction.³⁷Ibid. at 20.

Agribusinesses leapt at the opportunity to purchase artificially cheap grain, which they churned into processed food additives, ethanol, and livestock feed.³⁸Ayazi and Elsheik (2015) at 26 to 27. This subsidy fueled the growth of factory farms, as it became cheaper to purchase feed from the market than to grow it on-farm.³⁹Clark, E. Ann. “Benefits of re-integrating livestock and forages in crop production systems.” Journal of Crop Improvement. Vol. 12, Iss. 1-2. 2004 at 3 to 5. Diversified, family-scale farms gave way to factory farms that crowded livestock in confinement.⁴⁰Wise, Timothy A. Tufts University. Global Development and Environment Institute. “Identifying the Real Winners From U.S. Agricultural Policies.” Working Paper No. 05-07. December 2005 at 1 to 4; FWW analysis of the USDA Census of Agriculture (1997, 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017 census years). 

While the 2014 Farm Bill ended direct payments, subsidies have continued through other USDA programs such as federal subsidized crop insurance, which provides some relief to farmers facing weather disasters or price slumps. Just like with direct payments, it does nothing to address the underlying cause of price slumps (overproduction) and further incentivizes specialization of crops covered under the program.⁴¹Spangler, Kaitlyn et al. “Past and current dynamics of U.S. agricultural land use and policy.” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. Vol. 4. July 2020 at 12 to 13; Bruckner, Traci. “Agricultural subsidies and farm consolidation.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Vol. 75, No. 3. May 2016 at 628 to 633. The end result is the same: Agribusinesses continue to access a steady supply of grain sold below the cost of production⁴²USDA ERS. Commodities Costs and Returns. Available at https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/commodity-costs-and-returns/commodity-costs-and-returns/#Historical%20Costs%20and%20Returns:%20Milk. Accessed June 2022.  — produced on the backs of farmers and subsidized by taxpayers.

The 1996 Farm Bill should have been a cautionary tale for future Farm Bill negotiations: Short-term gains from gutting farm programs can quickly be reversed by crop price volatility and sharp economic downturns in farming. A 2011 University of Tennessee study found that if grain reserves had been in place from 1998 to 2010, all other commodity programs could have been eliminated, cutting costs by 60 percent while still protecting farm incomes.⁴³Ray, Daryll. [Presentation]. “NFU Reserve Study.” Presented at the National Farmers Union policy conference. University of Tennessee. April 15, 2011 at 40 and 42. 

The demise of the family farm

While farmers are caricatured and villainized as grifters living high on government handouts, most farmers struggle just to cover production costs and only survive thanks to household members holding off-farm jobs. The median farm income for farm households was negative for 24 of the last 25 years.⁴⁴USDA ERS. “Farm household income for 2020F — December 2020 update.” December 2, 2020; USDA ERS (February 4, 2022). 

This tightly consolidated supply chain is especially vulnerable to shocks and disruptions, as we saw at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Farmers who could not bring their products to market were left to euthanize herds, dump milk, and destroy ripe vegetable fields.⁴⁵Corkery, Michael and David Yaffe-Bellany. “Meat plant closures mean pigs are gassed or shot instead.” New York Times. May 14, 2020; David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery. “Dumped milk, smashed eggs, plowed vegetables: Food waste of the pandemic.” New York Times. Updated March 6, 2022. Meanwhile, agribusiness giants like Tyson profited from scarcity, enjoying increased revenue in 2020 and 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels.⁴⁶Tyson Foods, Inc. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Form 10-K. Commission File No. 001-14704. FY ended October 2, 2021 at 25.

History repeats itself, with today’s boom-and-bust cycles and ecological conditions eerily like those of the Dust Bowl era, with climate chaos adding more threats. This is both a warning about where we are heading and a blueprint for the robust public policy we need to reverse course.

Current farm programs allow prices to fall below the cost of producing the crops. When prices fall enough, the government only reimburses farmers to cover some of their losses. The true beneficiaries of taxpayer-funded farm subsidies are factory farms, meatpackers, and food processors; subsidies simply launder money through farmers. Government payments to farmers allow buyers of cheap raw material crops to pay less. For example, a Tufts University study found that factory farms reaped $34.8 billion between 1997 and 2005 by buying feed at below-production cost.⁴⁷Starmer, E. and T. A. Wise. Tufts University. Global Development and Environment Institute. “Feeding at the Trough: Industrial Livestock Firms Saved $35 Billion From Low Feed Prices.” GDAE Policy Brief No. 07-03. December 2007. 

Are subsidies really the problem?

It has become common to blame every problem in the food system on misguided farm subsidy programs. But it is not that simple. Ending government payments to farmers will not fix the problems in our food supply. Subsidies are the result, not the cause, of the low prices farmers receive for their crops.

Farm program payments are not the main reason that U.S. farmers grow too much corn and soybeans. Farmers plant crops that the largest buyers demand: grain-trading companies, meatpackers and feedlots that feed corn and soybeans to livestock, and food manufacturers that use soybeans and corn in processed foods. Farmers grow what they can sell. Because of decades of corporate-controlled farm policy and consolidation of agribusiness crop buyers, commodity crops are the only option for farmers in many parts of the country.

A remote rural wheat farmer with a few thousand acres cannot suddenly switch to growing tomatoes to sell directly to consumers at the farmer’s market. The demand and infrastructure needed to sustain this type of transition away from intensive commodity crop production to regional food markets has been largely wiped out.

Four fixes will make the next Farm Bill a fair Farm Bill.

Conclusion

It is time to craft a Farm Bill for all. Instead of bowing to agribusinesses’ desire for cheap commodities, we need to reinstate tried-and-true supply management techniques that avoid the pitfalls of overproduction while providing guaranteed living wages to farmers.

We also need to redirect public funding to support farmers facing the challenge of climate chaos while supporting organic regenerative practices.

Achieving these goals means fighting the corporate interests that want to maintain the status quo. We must hold our elected leaders accountable and pressure them to support Farm Bill policies that truly work in the interest of farmers and consumers. Only then can we rebuild a food system that achieves environmental stewardship, provides living wages to farmers and food workers, and ensures access to fresh and healthy food for all.