Outside the Box
Powerful ‘Big Ag’ — not small farmers and ranchers or even tariffs — is the root cause of the food-affordability crisis
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The Trump administration recently announced a $12 billion package of “bridge payments” for America’s farmers. It’s an acknowledgment of how broken America’s food system has become.
But any payment is only a bandage for a deeply rigged market. It directs $11 billion in payments to Big Ag row-crop producers. That won’t confront the structural failures driving up America’s food prices. And it leaves behind the local farmers and ranchers currently getting squeezed by consolidation throughout the U.S. agricultural industry.

