Leaders Of Farm Groups: "Widespread Collapse" Coming

 

In a letter (pdf) to House and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairs and Ranking Members on Tuesday, a bipartisan group of former Agriculture Department and farm sector leaders warned of a "widespread collapse of America agriculture" due to "the harmful and compounding effect that Administration policies are having on our farmers and on the long-term competitiveness of U.S. agriculture."  The letter was signed by 27 prominent leaders in the agricultural sector.  Here are some pertinent excerpts :

We write as a group of bipartisan former leaders of American agricultural commodity and biofuels associations, farm leaders, and former USDA officials. We have spent our entire careers working to build U.S. agriculture and are dismayed at the damage that is being done to American farmers.

Farmer bankruptcies have doubled, barely half of all farms will be profitable this year, and the U.S. is running a historic agriculture trade deficit. These metrics reflect a sharp reversal from record farm export surpluses and farm incomes experienced just a few years ago. [snip]

The reasons for the dramatic turnaround are complex, but it is clear that the current Administration's actions, along with Congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing. And these impacts are not happening in a vacuum. At the same time that farm country is reeling from these blows to agriculture, rural health care cuts are threatening a vital safety net for America's farm families. Congress needs to assert itself on behalf of farmers if we are to avoid a widespread collapse of American agriculture and our rural communities.

The letter cites all of the Malignant Fascist's dystopian policies in that last paragraph that are making our country -- not just the agriculture sector -- poorer, weaker, more inhumane, and subject to a mad megalomaniac's whims, enabled by a Republican MAGAt cult in Congress.  More validation of "when you elect a clown, expect a circus."