by Elizabeth Henderson

Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in CounterPunch, and is reproduced with the author’s permission. While Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, his Vice Presidential pick, JD Vance, reveals an ongoing connection.

Since I started organic farming more than 40 years ago, I have heard the same claims about the wonders of farmers in the United States: They are unparalleled in their productivity, feed the world with safe food, and are innovative and efficient. From the glowing accounts from industry leaders, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the secretaries of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under every administration, U.S. trade negotiators, and deans of schools of agriculture, you would never know that 44 million people across the nation suffer from food insecurity, 5 million farms have gone under—especially the farms of people of color—or agriculture is the primary source of pollution for the waters of the U.S.

During the public debates on the Farm Bill every five years—that compendious package of legislation that regulates food and farming—politicians from all camps praise the iconic American farmer and defend proposals that have steadily consolidated the grip of concentrated agribusiness on the global food system.

In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, released the ninth edition of Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, a series of books outlining specific policy recommendations for the federal government. (The first one was released in 1981 to guide the incoming Reagan administration.)

Chapter 10 of this book is the latest iteration of the party line in defense of the status quo. In this nearly 900-page manifesto, a 400-member team lays out a plan for taking power at noon on January 20, 2025.

In the name of restoring “the blessings of Liberty” to the ordinary people of the country, ending elitist rule, and “woke culture,” the authors propose a classic Stalinist model, which entails reducing civil service professionals who staff government agencies to a minimum and replacing them with political appointees who will make sure that everyone remains loyal to the (Republican) president’s agenda.

The introduction makes this delusional declaration: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.”

‘Liberating’ the USDA From Environmental Issues

To see what this means for food and farming, I read the chapter on agriculture. It was written by Daren Bakst, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, a nonprofit libertarian think tank that advocates for limited government. (Bakst previously served as a senior research fellow for environmental policy and regulation at the Heritage Foundation, an activist conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.)

Bakst begins by parroting the mainstream line on agriculture in the United States, a sentiment I have heard for more than four decades: “American farmers efficiently and safely produce food to meet the needs of individuals around the globe. Because of the innovation and resilience of the nation’s farmers, American agriculture is a model for the world. If farmers are allowed to operate without unnecessary government intervention, American agriculture will continue to flourish, producing plentiful, safe, nutritious, and affordable food.”

So, what interference does Bakst think is holding the nation’s agriculture back? We must translate some of his language to expose his code words and decipher his recommendations. He wants to liberate the United States Department of Agriculture so that it can focus on “removing governmental barriers that hinder food production or otherwise undermine efforts to meet consumer demand.”

As he sees it, the USDA has been using its power to change the nature of the food and agriculture economy into one that is “equitable and climate-smart.”

Translation: Eliminate regulations on toxic or synthetic farm inputs, allow the commercial use of new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) without safety testing, and end any attempts at redressing racial inequities or rekindling antitrust so that the megacorporations that control retail, distribution, processing, and export can continue exploiting society and the environment for profit.

Bakst insists that USDA’s current vision is much too broad. In a 2023 report, the agency writes: “An equitable and climate-smart food and agriculture economy that protects and improves the health, nutrition, and quality of life of all Americans; yields healthy land, forests, and clean water; helps rural America thrive; and feeds the world.”

To narrow its focus to producing food efficiently so that it is as cheap as possible (low-income households spend a higher percentage of their incomeson food), he proffers this model mission: “To develop and disseminate agricultural information and research, identify and address concrete public health and safety threats directly connected to food and agriculture, and remove both unjustified foreign trade barriers for U.S. goods and domestic government barriers that undermine access to safe and affordable food absent a compelling need—all based on the importance of sound science, personal freedom, private property, the rule of law, and service to all Americans.”

In case we missed his main point, Bakst clarifies: “The USDA should recognize what should be self-evident: Agricultural production should first and foremost be focused on efficiently producing safe food.”

Translation: Environmental issues are ancillary. Equity and justice are not the Department of Agriculture’s concerns, and to maintain the existing social order, it is necessary to keep working people fed.

The Biden administration’s programs supporting organic farming, announced on May 14, 2024, are especially offensive to Bakst. In his view, the investment of $300 million to assist farmers in transitioning to organic demonstrates Biden’s disrespect for farmers and his desire to dictate farming practices to them.

In summarizing his recommendations, Bakst repeats all the above and adds that the U.S. should end any association with the United Nations, particularly the efforts for sustainable food development.

Taking on Commodity Funding, Crop Insurance, and Nutrition Programs

Addressing one of the fights underway in the 2024 Farm Bill debates, Bakst wants to repeal the agriculture secretary’s discretionary powers in allocating Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) funding. Established as part of the 1933 New Deal, the CCC serves as a pool of federal funds for domestic farm income support, conservation, marketing, and export programs.

Congressional Republicans have been attacking Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for using $3.1 billion for “climate-smart” agriculture.

Those same Republicans did not make a peep when Trump used billions to compensate farmers for losses from his tariff wars with China.

In Bakst’s view, market pricing interference reeks of “harmful central planning.” He wants to eliminate any trace of price support that forces megacorporations to pay prices that cover farmers’ production costs. He favors legislation that would end the primary subsidy programs, the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs, since they compensate farmers when prices fall below certain levels.

He wants to cut the federal sugar program because it limits production and keeps U.S. sugar prices above international prices.

Bakst worries that higher sugar prices will create hardship for low-income households. He accuses farmers who use both subsidy programs and crop insurance of double-dipping. Instead, he proposes relying exclusively on crop insurance to help farmers survive weather catastrophes.

Bakst slightly nods toward fairness, calling for reducing the current 60 percent subsidy rate for crop insurance premiums to 50 percent, explaining, “After all, taxpayers should not have to pay more than the farmers who benefit from the crop insurance policies.”

As a refreshing surprise, amid all his market obfuscation, Bakst advocates for a more open Farm Bill process. Sustainable agriculture proponents could not put it more clearly: “The farm bill too often is developed behind closed doors and without any chance for real reform… When it comes to American agriculture and welfare programs, they deserve sound policy debates, not political tactics at the expense of thoughtful discourse.”

Bakst makes this statement in the context of his insistence that agriculture and nutrition programs should be separated.

He advocates for moving all food and nutrition programs under USDA to the Department of Health and Human Services along with other welfare anti-poverty programs based on means-testing. Clumping them together would make the exorbitant amounts of money the government spends more obvious so that work requirements can be increased and payments to people who don’t deserve them can be eliminated.

He further slams the Biden administration for raising SNAP outlays by 23 percent to pay for the redefined Thrifty Food Plan.

Echoing right-wing influencers, Bakst insists that benefit guidelines are so loose that millionaires have been able to claim Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. However, the only evidence he provides is a January 15, 2018, article by Kristina Rasmussen, “How Millionaires Collect Food Stamps,” published in the Wall Street Journal, which does not give any data to back up the claim.

He blames excessive regulations for the shortages of infant formula that have led some states to allow Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) payments to only a single company. He wants to return free school meal programs to the “original goal of providing food to K–12 students who otherwise would not have food to eat while at school.”

In addition, Bakst opposes any federal dietary guidelines: food choices should be individual, with dietary advice left to the private sector and a person’s physician.

Similarly, he opposes federal involvement in planetary needs and climate change mitigation since farmers are the “original conservationists.”

Bakst would like to see conservation programs focused on specific and measurable environmental concerns instead of those that are “speculative in nature” (translation: climate change): “Any assistance to farmers to take specific actions should not be provided unless the assistance will directly and clearly help to address a specific environmental problem. Further, any assistance to encourage farmers to engage in certain practices should only be provided if farmers would not have adopted the practices in the first place.”

Referring to the Conservation Reserve Program as an “overbroad” effort, he suggests eliminating it. This program provides payments to farmers to remove highly erodible land from production.

Translation: Private property rights are supreme.

Building on his contention that Biden’s USDA is dictating practices to farmers, Bakst opposes any environmental requirements for program eligibility. He insists that the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is overreaching because it offers payments for a list of practices. Instead, “each farm (as a function of eligibility) must have created a general best practices plan. Such a plan could be approved by the local county Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD).”

Bakst seems confident that since their peers elect them, local SWCD commissioners will spend funds for changing farm operations more cautiously.

To free the flow of farm products, Bakst advocates accepting state inspections as adequate for interstate meat sales, even though standards vary from state to state, with some being much lower than others.

He seeks to dismantle conservation easements since they restrict private property by limiting future land uses.

However, his recommendations on checkoff programs would resonate with many mid-sized and smaller farmers. By law, farms that produce certain commodities must pay a percentage of their revenues to programs that promote those commodities (for example, “Got Milk?”).

Bakst declares: “Marketing orders and checkoff programs are some of the most egregious programs run by the USDA. They are, in effect, a tax—a means to compel speech—and government-blessed cartels. Instead of getting private cooperation, they are tools for industry actors to work with government to force cooperation.”

Regarding trade and exports, Bakst distinguishes between trade policy and product promotion. He favors policies that reduce trade barriers “such as sanitary and phytosanitary measures, blocking American agricultural products from gaining access to foreign markets,” especially barriers to biotechnology, which he equates with innovation.

Translation: There should be no labeling of GMOs or regulations that slow GMO adoption; Mexico should have to accept U.S. GMO corn.

As an ideological free marketeer, however, Bakst opposes government promotion of food and farm products for export, “something these businesses and industries can and should do on their own.”

Bakst’s first concern is maximizing lumber industry access to the nation’s forests. He insists that harvesting more trees is the way to reduce forest fires. Without citing any evidence, he asserts, “Increasing timber sales could also play an important role in the effort to change the behavior of wildfire because there would be less biomass.”

The chapter on agriculture does not touch on central food system issues like the regulation of chemicals and farm labor since they are under the purview of different departments of the “administrative state.”

Republican Stance on How to Deal with the EPA and Farm Labor Issues

In Chapter 13 of the book, Mandy M. Gunasekara, founder of Energy 45 Fund—a pro-Trump nonprofit—tackles the Environmental Protection Agency, criticizing its policies for limiting the tools available to farmers by giving too much weight to the adverse effects of new chemicals instead of looking at their benefits. A conservative EPA would do a better job of risk-benefit balancing.

In Chapter 18, the “Department of Labor and Related Agencies,” Jonathan Berry of the Federalist Society, who was part of former President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor, displays the schizophrenia that has characterized conservative policies on farm labor. On the one hand, he is eager to protect the family farm, asserting that there should be a cap on H-2A visas—which allows agricultural workers to take up jobs in the U.S. temporarily—and a gradual phasedown over the next decade to protect farm jobs for U.S. citizens.

Instead of making it easier to import labor, the government should encourage industry to develop more equipment to reduce the need for employees.

On the other hand, if H-2A workers were reduced, labor shortages might force farm employers to increase wages, “raising the price of food for all Americans, and [that] even such wage increases may not be sufficient to attract enough temporary American workers to complete the necessary farm tasks to get food products to market since those jobs are, by their nature, seasonal.”

For this reason, a conservative labor department might want to retain H-2A as a relatively inexpensive way to keep farms profitable and food prices low.

Here we find another nugget of agreement: “To protect the American workforce from unscrupulous immigration lawyers, employers, and labor brokers, the department must follow the recommendations of the OIG [Office of the Inspector General] and institute more robust investigations for suspected visa fraud and speedier debarments for those found guilty.”

The Need to Preserve Solidarity Along the Food Chain

To return to Bakst: The guiding concepts for his conservative USDA are efficiency, safety, and affordability, so it is essential to translate what he means by those terms.

Efficient farms produce the greatest possible yields per acre with minimal restrictions on the materials used for fertility and pest control or on the use of wetlands or highly erodible soils.

Safe foods are free of pathogens without consideration of chemical residues.

Affordable food is cheap without public guidelines for nutrient density, health consequences of highly industrialized processing, and environmental or social impacts—which remain externalized—so the public can avoid paying for them at the checkout counter.

Along with the other contributors to the Mandate for Leadership, Bakst cloaks his totalitarian formula for consolidating the capitalist system as a valiant defense of individual freedom.

For more than 50 years, the movement for a more equitable, just, and localized way of growing food without damaging the planet has been opposing the unsustainable dominant food and agriculture system.

“The blessings of Liberty” unleashed through this plan would drive the movement for food sovereignty back into the shadows. From every indication, however, it is a last-ditch effort.

Whatever the election outcome in 2024, the farmers and conscious eaters in every state and county are reaffirming their liberated territory and joining hands along the food chain for cooperation, solidarity, and community.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Elizabeth Henderson farmed at Peacework Farm in Wayne County, New York, for more than 30 years. Peacework CSA was one of the first community-supported agriculture farms in the U.S. She is co-chair of the Interstate Council policy committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) and represents the Interstate Council on the board of the Agricultural Justice Project. Henderson is the lead author of Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture (Chelsea Green, 2007), with a Spanish-language e-book edition in 2017.

The post The GOP’s Stalinesque Plan 2025 to Shape the Future of U.S. Food and Agriculture first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

I had been cynical about DSA for a few months. The stress of adjusting to a role in leadership, national level strife, and the normal aches and pains of movement had taken on a new weight in the face of the death of my favorite person. I was sick of talking about things I couldn't control as close as my own family or as far away as Palestine. I wanted to do anything. So on April 25th, when the message came that arrestees from the USC Palestine encampment needed people to greet them when they were released, I drove to jail support.

Hours of waiting later, when the students trickled out with their keffiyehs and citation cards, freezing because the southern California night is so much colder than the daytime and people dress for success, not arrest, I was happy to witness them making history and meet their simple human needs in return. We fed them lukewarm pizza and wrapped them in blankets before they talked to the press, looking like survivors of a shipwreck trapped in air bubbles (except for the few the counter-protestors had thrown water on to make their hours in jail even more miserable). I wondered if socialism is as simple as giving someone you don't know a water bottle because you trust that they are fighting for the right thing. 

I liked the feeling of witnessing. Thus, three days later, comrades and I visited, as ambassadors from a foreign land, the UCLA Palestine Encampment. 

I am glad I was there the night there were no counter-protesters, so I can describe it as it was without outside instigation. There was food! A medic tent! A library! A prayer area for Muslim students and a Jewish Seder! Even daily scheduled programming, including a screening of “Battle for Algiers”.  We found our friends first (because you always find your friends first at these sorts of things) and discussed the business of the day: whether the encampment still needed supplies moved, impressions from Labor Notes, and most of all, the miracle around us. 

I was amazed. The past few months had made me skeptical of collective action in ways I didn't register until I felt my spirits lift at the immediacy of the problems at hand—who had a charger, what time did the movie start, who would stay with a comrade overnight. Direct action—Chicken Noodle Soup for the organizer’s soul. 

It made it all the more heartbreaking when the encampment was attacked and dismantled a few days later. In the heat of trying to find YDSA comrades, coordinating jail support for the latest batch of arrestees, and endless discourse about the consequences of bringing shields to protests (which for the record, will get you “rolled up” by police in L.A. County), there was a pressing need to maintain existing commitments. It was tempting to dismiss May Day parades and priority campaign events as incidental to the student uprisings, but the presence of the broader labor movement and left at each encampment showed that all projects in defense of the international working class were intimately connected. 

The work did not cease in its immediacy and importance, but it became more abstract. How could we fund supplies for newly founded encampments? How could we connect with leftist media personalities to amplify the voices of students? How could we develop people being mobilized to stay in the work long-term? And above all else, how could we use the zeitgeist to deepen the impact of a pre-planned vigil at City Council member Katy Yaroslavsky’s office asking her to join us in bringing a ceasefire resolution to the nation’s second largest city?

Being in the conjuncture feels like swimming where the waves of two oceans meet each other. Moving through it to a specific destination is all the more absurd. But as onerous as the organizing journey was, it was needed to sustain the energy of the spontaneous student uprisings. The boring work is beautiful. The boring work sustains life.

The vigil went well, but it went without me. [Link to Instagram Post w/ Vigil Images]

A week after my visit to the UCLA encampment, a comrade from another local DSA needed a ride home after retrieving items post-arrest. We looked, a little sadly, for their backpack. I knew from word of mouth that the police had thrown everything from the site of the encampment into a dumpster two days before, but sometimes we need to learn things ourselves to know them to be true. 

As my new acquaintance searched, I watched the campus authorities perform a stilted flag ceremony where there had once been a homemade barricade. The green lawn seemed empty in a way I would never have felt it to be if I had not visited the encampment. The performance of restoring order was such a shallow thing when I closed my eyes and remembered the community built there. I mourned how much more we could have done if the students taking graduation photos and walking to Friday night parties had joined us before.

My comrade said they accepted the backpack was gone and was ready to go home. As we walked toward the car in the golden May light, I thought about the vigil across town and I appreciated that the beauty of collective movement, no matter how small in comparison to the beast we live inside, is that there are always enough people to leave no one behind. There are always enough people to care about people they don't know—here or across the world. There are always enough people to rise again.

DSA-LA continues to support freedom for Palestine via strike support, political education, student organizing, and of course, advancing a ceasefire resolution through LA City Council.

Peninsula DSA Supports Single Inclusive Democratic State for Palestinians and Israelis

SAN MATEO, July 16, 2024 - Following the leadership of our comrades in Chicago DSA, Peninsula (CA) DSA voted at our June 2024 General Membership Meeting to declare our support for a political vision of one democratic state in Palestine. We identify Zionism’s politicization of identity and Israel’s nature as a state exclusive to Jews as a root cause of the suffering and injustice which Israel has inflicted upon the people of Palestine, and we believe that true peace and liberation can only be achieved by the dismantling of the apartheid, settler-colonial state and the establishment of one democratic state in its stead.

The material reality is that a two-state solution is not feasible, and it has long been more of an aspirational myth rather than a serious policy proposal. In the words of Jewish Currents contributing editor Joshua Leifer, the idea is little more than a “political fiction” which gives liberal Zionists a way “to reconcile their seemingly contradictory commitments to both ethnonationalism and liberal democracy.” Since the 1970s, when Palestinian intellectuals first proposed a “mini-state” on 22% of historic Palestine, Israel has continuously redefined the conceptual Palestinian state to include ever-less territory and to hold ever-less sovereignty. By the 1980s, there were already 100,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, prompting former Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Meron Benvenisti to warn that it was “five minutes to midnight” for the two-state solution. Now, there are over 650,000 settlers in the West Bank, and settlers, emboldened by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, are committing even more violence and stealing more Palestinian land. The two-state solution—which has come to mean a fragmented Palestine under de facto Israeli control—cannot generate a movement powerful enough to bring liberation to Palestine; it only provides cover for ongoing ethnic cleansing.

For this reason we support a movement for a single, inclusive state between the river and the sea that is:

• Democratic. All citizens would be equal in the eye of the state, including its laws, institutions and policies, regardless of identity. This includes the right of those who have been ethnically cleansed from Palestine to return and enjoy full citizenship.
• Secular. Freedom of worship would be guaranteed, and one’s religion or identity would not be a factor in granting or denying rights to citizens or non-citizens.
• Socially just. Stolen land, homes and property would be restituted to all victims of dispossession. Resources and social welfare would be allotted fairly to all citizens. The income, poverty and education gaps would be bridged.

Finally, we call on national DSA to likewise declare its support of one democratic state in Palestine: a “one-person, one-vote” state in which everyone is represented equally, regardless of ethnicity, religion, origin, etc. As socialists it is our responsibility to imagine what a just world would look like and share that vision with the world. Without democracy, self-determination is impossible, and without full equal rights under a secular state, there can be no democracy for the Palestinian people. Separate can never be equal.

Further reading:

• “What Does ‘From the River to the Sea’ Really Mean?” (2021), Jewish Currents
• “Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return” (2021), Jewish Currents
• The Resilient Fiction of a Two-State Solution” (2020), Jewish Currents
• “Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine” (2020), Jewish Currents
• “The Case for the One Democratic State Initiative as a Counter-Hegemonic Endeavor” (2023), Mondoweiss
• One Democratic State Initiative

Thorn West: Issue No. 210

State Politics

• Following President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek a second term, Vice President Kamala Harris has secured enough verbal commitments from delegates to have essentially locked herself in as his replacement.The California Democratic Party played a crucial role on behalf of the former California Senator.

Housing Justice

• Governor Gavin Newsom issued a \executive order demanding that state agencies immediately begin clearing encampments on state property. The order does not appear to directly impact policy within Los Angeles or other cities. Mayor Karen Bass was among those who criticized it. The order cites the recent 6–3 Supreme Court decision that stripped legal protections from people experiencing homelessness, which Newsom submitted a brief in support of.

Labor

• The California State Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of Prop 22, siding with Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, and allowing them to continue to classify their workers as independent contractors.

• This week, Metro voted to expand a public restroom pilot program that is currently operated by a contractor that relies on gig-workers. Following the advocacy of DSA-LA and others, the motion was amended to include a feasibility study on bringing the program in-house and staffing it with Metro employees.

• Los Angeles vendors have declared victory after a settlement in their lawsuit against the city over a municipal policy of “no-vending zones,” which were out of compliance with a 2018 state law. The settlement eliminates the last of these zones, after a City Council motion eliminated most of them earlier in the year. It also provides restitution for fines issued against vendors for operating in these zones.

• Members of a coalition of unions representing workers at Disney’s Southern California theme parks voted to authorize a strike, with 99% of members in favor. Later in the week, the union reached a tentative agreement with Disney.

• Effective today, video game performers and voiceover artists represented by SAG-AFTRA are on strike. At stake are worker protections against AI. Statement from SAG-AFTRA here. Petition of support here.

Local Media

• California will consider AB-886, the California Journalism Preservation Act, which would require tech platforms – which siphon money away from media outlets when they link to news items – to pay a fee to support local journalism. The LA Times reports on similar efforts in other countries.

The post Governor Issues Executive Order Demanding Sweeps + Video Game Performers on Strike appeared first on The Thorn West.

A version of this article was originally published in the Nokomis Messenger. MPRB Arborists maintain 600,000 trees that cover 29.8% of Minneapolis with an urban canopy. Recent rain, hail, and wind gusts, as well as the LiUNA 363 labor union strike, has highlighted the precarity of our tree canopy, as well as how much work […]