Five Questions Al Gore Asked About the Future of Farming
Who farm policy serves, how corporate power shapes it, and what farmers need to succeed
Angela Huffman Oct 22
This week, I joined former Vice President Al Gore at The Climate Underground, the conference he hosts with Alice Waters on his Tennessee farm.
Gore moderated our farm policy panel with rancher and former USDA Farm Service Agency administrator Zach Ducheneaux, farmer Josh Riddle, and me.
Across his five questions, one issue kept coming up: who does farm policy serve, and how do we make it work better for farmers and the public?
Here are his questions, shortened, and my main points.
1. What are one or two of the most significant changes in farm policy under the new administration?
In March 2025, USDA canceled roughly $1 billion that helped schools and food banks buy from local farmers.
Those programs gave independent farmers dependable customers. For farmers considering regenerative practices, knowing someone will buy what they grow can make investing in change possible.
USDA redirected hundreds of millions of those dollars into its bird flu response, including relief for huge egg companies whose crowded facilities can amplify disease spread. Major producers received taxpayer support while reporting enormous profits and facing a Justice Department price-fixing investigation.
We took markets away from independent farmers while supporting the largest, most abusive corporations.
Congress also changed farm policy outside the usual Farm Bill process. The One Big Beautiful Bill increased commodity support and crop insurance subsidies while cutting SNAP food assistance.
For decades, lawmakers supporting farm programs and those supporting food assistance needed each other’s votes. Giving commodity interests much of what they wanted while cutting nutrition assistance weakened that bargain and their incentive to negotiate a full Farm Bill.
2. How does crop insurance help or hinder farmers adopting regenerative practices?
Crop insurance is backwards. These taxpayer dollars are meant to protect farmers from losses, but too often the program supports vulnerable farming systems while making practices that could reduce losses harder to adopt.
Some of the needed changes include:
- Stop helping the biggest farms get bigger. Put reasonable limits on subsidies that help large operations expand and outbid their neighbors for land.
- Make diversification and conservation easier to insure. Cover the whole farm business without excessive paperwork. Fix planting deadlines that get in the way of cover crops.
- Reward farmers for reducing risk. When better soil management reduces drought or flood losses, premiums should reflect that. Farmers should share in those savings.
3. How do corporate lobbying interests shape farm policy?
Washington, D.C. too often accepts corporate special interests as the voice of farmers.
The May 2025 Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s assessment called out corporate capture, agriculture consolidation, chemical dependence, and farm programs working against healthy food. Farm Action applauded it and submitted a farmer-led reform plan in response.
Then industry flooded the process. Secretary Kennedy reported meetings with more than 140 agribusiness interests. Bayer’s Modern Ag Alliance was a major lobbying force. By September, the strategy had backed away from confronting those problems.
Trump later used the Defense Production Act to support domestic glyphosate production. His administration also backed Bayer at the Supreme Court to block farmers from suing when harmed by pesticides. I spoke at the MAHA rally outside the Court opposing it.
At the conference, we heard about Jonathan Lundgren and Will Harris’s Oval Office experience. They expected a regenerative agriculture signing ceremony and ended up debating Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall over pesticide industry protections. Farm Bureau was treated as the farmer voice while farmers standing there were on their own.
USDA checkoff programs require farmers to pay into funds that help bankroll groups claiming to speak for them. Farm Action found that nearly one-third of Bayer’s Modern Ag Alliance members received checkoff funding. The multinational meatpacker lobby received more than 70% of its income from checkoffs in 2020, or $26 million. Farmers shouldn’t have to fund organizations whose lobbying works against them. Ending checkoff contracts with lobbying groups would help level the playing field.
When someone says, “Farmers need this,” ask: Which farmers? Who benefits? A seed, chemical, or meatpacking company’s interests are not the same as farmers’.
4. What are your top one or two federal policy priorities to support regenerative agriculture?
Help farmers afford the transition and make sure they can earn a living afterward.
Regenerative practices can improve soil, strengthen weather resilience, and reduce dependence on costly inputs sold by dominant companies. But farmers face upfront costs and uncertainty within programs largely built around conventional commodity production.
Use existing USDA programs to help support soil-building practices, provide practical advice, and keep farmers insured as they diversify.
Then build dependable markets. Government food purchases for schools, military bases, and food banks can support independent farmers and reward soil-building practices. Contracts should consider more than just price and volume.
Regional processing, storage, and delivery systems help farmers reach those buyers. Fair competition helps ensure input suppliers and buyers don’t take the gains from farmers’ work.
Farmers should decide what works for their land. Policy should help make those choices possible. See Farm Action’s full Farm Bill platform here.
5. How can people help change farm policy?
We face enormous corporate money and influence. We need a broad coalition, including people who don’t agree on every issue.
About ten years ago, my colleague Joe Maxwell took Senator Cory Booker on a Midwest farm tour, from Illinois farmers to Kansas cowboys, many of them Republicans.
Those conversations built a lasting relationship. Today, Booker is a champion for country-of-origin labeling, checkoff and crop insurance reform, regenerative agriculture, and taking on agricultural monopolies.
Farmers, health advocates, and environmentalists have reasons to work together. Blaming farmers closes the door to change.
Invite lawmakers to farms. Show them what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what they can do.
Support Farm Action and other farmer-led groups. Research, organizing, and bringing farmers into policy decisions take resources. If you fund food, health, or climate work, consider making farm policy part of that investment.
Farmers need real choices, fair markets, and a chance to keep more of what they earn.
The question isn’t whether farmers can change American agriculture. It’s whether we’re willing to change the policies standing in their way.
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