When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution, whether it’s conventional air water and soil pollution or climate change, it is very often low-income communities and communities of color. The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very same communities.
Department of Agriculture
induce farmers to adopt organic farming.’® There was no recognition that farmers know how to farm better than D.C. politicians" or a that organic food is expensive” and land-intensive.’* The Biden Administration has also been pushing so-called
“climate-smart”” agricultural practices which received additional support in the partisan Inflation Reduction Act.”°
American agriculture should not need defending. According to the USDA’s latest data, farm output nearly tripled (a 175 percent increase) from 1948 to 2019, while the amount of land farmed decreased. In fact, as farm output increased by 175 percent, a// agricultural inputs increased by only 4 percent.”
In 2021, despite high food prices—a major problem and regressive—American consumers spent an average of about 10 percent of their personal disposable income on food, which is close to historic lows. For decades, this share has been in decline.”? America’s farmers efficiently produce food using fewer resources, making it possible for food to be affordable. This reality is not only something that should be defended but also touted as a prime example of what makes American agriculture so successful. The connection between efficiency and affordability seems lost in the Biden Administration’s effort to transform the food system.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Proactively Defend Agriculture. From the outset, the next Administration should: Denounce efforts to place ancillary issues like climate change ahead of food productivity and affordability when it comes to agriculture.
• Remove the US. from any association with U.N. and other efforts to push sustainable-development schemes connected to food production.
• Defend American agriculture and advance the critical importance of efficient and innovative food production, especially to advance safe and affordable food.
• Stress that ideal policy should remove obstacles imposed on American farmers and individuals across the food supply chain so that they can meet the food needs of Americans.
• Clarify the critical importance of efficiency to food affordability, and why a failure to recognize this fact especially hurts low-income households who spend a disproportionate share of after-tax income on food compared to higher-income households.”
To accomplish these objectives, anew Administration should announce its principles through an executive order, the USDA should remove all references
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