@farmjustice
Family Farm (Farm Justice) activist for 40 years, as student organizer/org founder, org. member, leader, staff, regional and national committee/board member. Major farm justice data work. https://familyfarmjustice.me/brads-farm-justice-work-online/
Here's a new piece I found and re-worked to post online. It was originally part of my overture for the Presbyterian Church, where I listed "12 Arguments." Brad Wilson, "The Many Arguments for Restoring New Deal Farm Programs," Family Farm Justice, 3/4/26, familyfarmjustice.me/2026/03/04/t....
5 corn belt states: that’s Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio, as in the chart above.
On LinkedIn a guy was warning about how agriculture across the country might start to look more like California. So I made him this chart, to show how profitability, measured as a simple Return on Equity compares.
First chart: Subsidies have not always been the same! Second Chart: compare APAC: "$500,000 in sales does not (usually) a viable net income make” these days. agpolicy.org/weekcol/449.... Note: Direct Payments include conservation subsidies, commodity subsidies, etc.
Re. previous charts. By asking different questions of the data, we can learn new things. For the red and blue state Presidential administrations, I use pink and blue. For the New Deal farm program era (state data begins in 1949) I use green. For price floors but at reduced levels, tan. No PF white
Farm subsidies are often shown as a proportion of Net Farm Income but should really be shown in relation to Gross Receipts of Farms (& similar). I’ve started a series where I’m doing that for major #farm states. Here’s Minnesota.
Here’s my new slide show on The Rise and Fall of Farming in Iowa. I am making similar slide shows on 20 or more other states of the Midwest and beyond. It explains what’s behind the recent rise in farm foreclosures. drive.google.com/file/d/1VIHt...
Has @ceja-action.org been able to avoid submitting to the dozens of farm subsidy myths that have diverted so many organizations and activists away from the needed farm policy solutions? drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Is @ceja-action.org looking in to the ways that the reducing and ending of the New Deal farm programs has hurt the rural environment in California? It's been a huge factor here in Iowa. familyfarmjustice.me/2022/07/31/y...
Wow! Trump’s supposed pause in the genocide and ethnic cleansing didn’t last long! www.democracynow.org/2025/10/20/i...
Republicans have been asking me why Democrats are not congratulating Trump for his supposed pause in the genocide and ethnic cleansing, (where Israel quickly continued it). "The Israeli-US plan is coercive, colonial, and patently illegal.” znetwork.org/znetarticle/...
A handful of rotting corpses is seen as a call to genocide and ethnic cleansing. Both Israel and Trump have quickly returned to calls for violence.
AP: Israel plans to halve aid into Gaza over slow return of dead hostages, a test for the Gaza ceasefire
"a test"? you mean...a violation?
On previous chart, most believe the yellow subsidies are above the black line, & don't know the blue line exists. USDA's biggest 10% of farms are mostly family sized or similar but larger or smaller. The bottom 80% are small acreages, (bottom 50% tiny). Facts like these are almost never known.
On soybean & other subsidies you're expressing the dominant narrative of agribusiness/Republicans, (deliberately blind to the biggest part of the farm economy & politics). The 4 biggest of AgBiz are 1,000 times bigger than the 4 biggest soy farmers & got 12-24x more /bu, 1953-2010, from farmers.
The lesson of history is that tyrants cannot be appeased.
Appeasement only feeds their insatiable hunger for power.
Tyrants prey on people who feel unsafe and vulnerable.
But without mass submission, a tyrant is powerless.
Murder on the High Seas: Trump Orders Killings of Venezuelans in International Waters
youtu.be/ns8av0r475c?...
Actually a rotation is not ever "monocrop," and to restore livestock to the land in enhanced grazing systems as part of crop rotations would be awesome. The #FarmBill was reduced massively to force farmers to subsidize AgBiz, (massive penalization). That's what went wrong. Massive grazing is step 1
The increasing penalization of commodity farmers over 7 decades led to the loss of diversity. www.slideshare.net/slideshow/th...
The @nfudc.bsky.social farm bill proposal manages supply for farmers, (like all giant agribusiness industry companies can and do do for themselves). It's tied to the cost of production, so this crisis would never occur if it was enacted. agpolicy.org/weekcol/608....
The National Farmers Union #FarmBill proposal is tied to the cost of production, so it always adjusts and addresses high input costs. An APAC study showed the impacts of this approach. It's much more powerful than merely addressing antitrust, as it fixes markets. agpolicy.org/weekcol/608....
Contrary to the Trump Administration claim, every year under Biden net farm income was higher than every year under Trump. National Farmers Union has a great reform proposal to save $100 billion in farm subsidies while ending farmer paid AgBiz subsidies (cheap prices). agpolicy.org/weekcol/583....
Talk about a rising farm crisis due to high input costs and cheap prices is going viral. @nfudc.bsky.social must use this teachable moment to inform people of it's #FarmBill proposal. (Did they prioritize this on the Fly In?)Save $100 billion while helping farmers. @mnfarmersunion.bsky.social
Talk about a rising farm crisis is going viral. It's essential that @familyfarmco.bsky.social teach people about their farm bill proposal in this teachable moment, (we're way behind on teaching it. Food/Enviro advocates don't know the issue, support agbiz). www.inmotionmagazine.com/ra08/FFFA200...
Republicans haven't been good for farmers and rural Iowa. www.slideshare.net/slideshow/ru...
Let’s remember what Trump 1.0 did to farmers. www.slideshare.net/slideshow/tr...
My primer on the Food Poverty Crisis, though not updated for a while, shows organizations and academics who understand the core farm justice and trade justice farm policies and programs. znetwork.org/zblogs/food-... See also my Farm Justice Primer, which is linked there as well.
The newer farm bill advocates have lived in a world of myth for too long, (as have the older conservatives). The issues at stake are huge. We need to get better. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_ty...
@lewismumford.bsky.social "The most precious collective invention of civilization, the city, second only to language itself in the transmission of culture, became from the outset the container of disruptive internal forces, directed toward ceaseless destruction and extermination." LM City in History
