The war on modern agriculture has taken many forms, from the disastrous Farm to Fork strategy in Europe, enforced organic farming in Sri Lanka, and calls for bans on our most critical inputs, like glyphosate. Each of these efforts stems from misunderstanding or outright deliberate misinformation.
Farmers across the world have been grateful to see the collapse of the much-maligned European Farm to Fork strategy. Without question, this policy framework was damaging farmers’ livelihoods in a serious way and contributing to the growing hunger amongst the world’s poorest. It finally seemed like the climate change-related war on agriculture was starting to fade.
Now, it looks like this was only the briefest of intermissions – before the next battle in the war began.
Today, we are seeing this war take on a new form, with the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the United States’ new Secretary of Health and Human Services. While he is not the Secretary of Agriculture – this role has been given to Brooke L. Rollins, who, to her credit, does not appear to share RFK Jr’s views – his role in Health and Human Services will still have significant influence over policy affecting farmers.
The Department of Health and Human Services is the largest department in the federal government of the US. It shapes key policies that impact farmers, from dietary guidelines to pesticide safety regulations and food labeling. Its influence on agriculture is real and significant.
What are Robert F. Kennedy’s Views on Agriculture?
RFK Jr. has been clear on his thoughts on modern agriculture. Recent claims such as “America’s ag policy is destroying America’s health” and “There’s illness all over the farm community, and it’s undoubtedly related to the intensity of chemical pesticides” should raise serious red flags in the farming community. He’s also been strongly opposed to GMOs, glyphosate, and even seed oils.
As a former environmental lawyer, heading up the Waterkeepers Alliance, he was directly involved with the lawsuit against Monsanto in 2017. He, along with other attorneys, joined forces to land a $289 million jury award for a groundskeeper who contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. While this was eventually reduced to $21 million, this set the precedent for hundreds of lawsuits to follow against glyphosate.
During his presidential run, before dropping out and endorsing Trump, his stated goal was to develop a system of “organic, regenerative agriculture” and to “transform our agricultural system to get pesticides out of our food supply.” Going a step further, he even claimed he would “weaponize” federal agencies to squeeze pesticides out of US farmers’ hands.
The interesting thing about RFK Jr’s stance on all this is that it’s the big corporations that are causing all this. He claims to be on the side of farmers: “farmers are among the dispossessed”. RFK Jr. paints a picture of farmers as powerless victims of big agriculture, forced into using seeds and chemicals we don’t want. In this, he’s flat out wrong
Farmers have choices. We decide how we want to look after our land, our people, and our crops and animals. We aren’t “forced” into using pesticides and GM seeds. We use them because they are the best tool available for the job.
RFK Jr doesn’t understand agriculture, or farmers. But that isn’t even the part that worries me most.
What concerns me about this is the change in demographics. This is no longer just coming from the left side of the political spectrum, but also from the right.
Changing Demographics
When I started farming back in 2010, there was a lot of criticism about genetic modification and pesticides. According to surveys at the time, the average person against modern agriculture was middle to upper class, university educated, and voted left-of-center.
The same people who were participated in protests like “March Against Monsanto” still seem to desire a return to Old MacDonald’s farm. The books we receive to read to our children don’t reflect our current world of agriculture – they instead show a farming style my grandparents lived through. A cab-less tractor, a plow, a few pigs, horses, cattle, chickens, and sheep, and an older farmer in overalls is still a deeply held image of how modern agriculture ought to be. But that isn’t how it is.
If agriculture still looked like Old MacDonald’s farm, we would never have achieved the single greatest accomplishment in the history of our species: the utter collapse of extreme poverty over the past century, while quintupling our population. Unfortunately, this miraculous story just can’t seem to hit the mainstream.
The worrisome change isn’t within that group of people that historically disliked modern agriculture. They have been consistent in their views for the last decade or more. It’s the group that no longer trusts anyone that worries me.
I have observed that the big change lately has been a group further to the right of the political spectrum. This was a group that was heavily criticized during the pandemic for refusing to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and for arguing against many of the restrictions put in place. These often severe restrictions on personal freedoms deeply worried millions of people and destroyed their trust in government.
I don’t want to over-generalize. This group is politically hard to define; some seem to be far right, some seem to be far left, some seem to be in the middle. What unites them is a failure of trust. But the growth of the size of the group opposing modern agriculture is highly concerning.
Misinformation Isn’t Exclusive to One Side
The Trump government is highly divisive. No question about that. And this is not the place to judge his administration. But regardless of any of our political views with the current American government, we need to call them out when they get things wrong, even if we aren’t from the US. Just as many of us criticized the European Farm to Fork strategy, we must not be afraid to call out policy makers’ views when they get them wrong. And in this case, without a doubt, RFK Jr is getting it wrong.
Glyphosate is one of the greatest discoveries in human history. It enabled the elimination of tillage in many parts of the world, including here in Western Canada, which has led to dramatic improvements in soil quality and greenhouse gas sequestration. It’s a fabulously cheap, safe, easy to use broad spectrum herbicide that leaves no meaningful residue in the soil. Its only weakness? Overuse has led to weed resistance.
Genetic modification took the advantages of glyphosate and amplified them, providing tools to insert resistance to it directly into genes of corn, cotton, soybean, and canola, adding an outstanding tool for weed control early in our crops’ life cycle, while its still small and vulnerable. GM technology didn’t stop with glyphosate, adding other herbicide tolerance traits like glufosinate. So much more could have been done with this incredibly safe and effective technology – but well-funded fear campaigns by environmental groups led to suffocating regulation that killed GM technology far too soon.
Seed oils, like canola, are healthy and relatively cheap options that have created enormous health benefits for millions of people. Sunflower, flax, safflower, soy, and other oils have their own impressive health benefits too. Demonizing them in favour of “natural” alternatives only adds to public health problems, confusing people and reducing trust in an already complex environment. In reality, a diet that includes both seed oils and natural products like butter is a far better choice than one or the other.
Farmers Aren’t Perfect – But They Have the Best Incentives
Is RFK Jr wrong about everything? No. America, and much of the Western world, do have serious problems with obesity, heart disease, and cognitive impairment. We also rely on too few crops, and depend too much on herbicides to keep weeds in check. There is still too much tillage being done in many parts of North America. We don’t always get our fertilizer rates right, leading to runoff and leaching. Farmers are not perfect.
But we will not be successful in addressing these complex issues by simply banning glyphosate and seed oils. All this would accomplish is damaging our environment and our soils with more tillage, reducing healthy consumer options, and seriously challenging farmers’ ability to make a living doing what they do best – growing food. While we farmers don’t always get it right, we have the best incentives to improve both our farms and the environment.
The Shifting Sands of the War on Agriculture
The war on modern agriculture has shifted once again, and once again we need to tell our story, share our perspectives, and encourage policy makers and the public to seek out opportunities to connect with farmers like ourselves. Advocating for modern agriculture is more important than ever.
Our farms are open. If you want to learn about why farmers do what they do, why they make the choices they make, ask!
The only way farmers can continue to feed our world in an increasingly sustainable fashion is if policy doesn’t get in our way, as it so disastrously did in Europe during Farm to Fork, and even worse in places like Sri Lanka. It’s the world’s poor that suffer most when we restrict farmers’ choices, but in the last few years, even the middle class has finally seen the impact of these policies in rising food prices. If America bans glyphosate and other crucial tools, that will rapidly escalate to a food inflation crisis the likes of which will make the last few years pale in comparison.
This affects everyone. Call or email your local representative today—tell them to support science-based agriculture policies . Stand up for farmers and science-based processes on social media. Give farmers a platform to share their stories.
If we fail to defend modern agriculture, we won’t just see rising food prices—we’ll see a global crisis of hunger and environmental degradation.
