On the Eve of Thanksgiving, A Prayer for the Farmer and a Call to Action

This Thanksgiving, let us be grateful to those who grow the food and to the animals and the plants we consume. Please take a moment to support farmers and healthy food policy (petition linked below)

On this Eve of Thanksgiving, as families gather in warm kitchens, stirring bubbling pots over hot stoves and setting tables in preparation for tomorrow’s feast, please do, truly give thanks to the farms, the farmers and to the animals and plants farmed which brought abundance to us this year.

Sharing food is a sacred act, and its eating is a gift from the Earth and from the communities who grew it. Food is a gift of life from one species to another, from the Earth herself, from the soil and land. Every act of food growing and consuming is part of a larger sacred web of nourishment and meaning with the aim and potential to sustain bodies, communities, and future generations.

Please sign the petition calling on USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins

To protect family farmers, restore local food programs, rebuild conservation support, and defend the land from permanent chemical harm. This is a moment that calls for witness and for action.

I woke before dawn thinking of those who make our lives possible, the night’s rain still kissing the land as the morning slowly awakened. My first thoughts were of our land and her stewards, giving, giving, and giving. How they work and toil to feed us.

A deep prayer arose in me: That in the coming year, both our communities and our government will awaken to the primacy of the sacred exchanges which give us life. It is not only animals who are sacrificed in our current food system, in fields and in confinement. It is also the farmers, the land and the very foundations of life itself.

As families prepare to gather at the sacred hearth in love and celebration, farmers are going bankrupt at record rates. The programs that supported healthy local food have been eliminated. And just last week, as we Americans prepared to give thanks for the harvest, the Environmental Protection Agency approved yet another “forever chemical” pesticide, poisoning the land future generations will depend upon.

Family Farms are Disappearing

Farmers are facing the worst financial crisis in decades. Since 2020, seed costs are up 18 percent, fuel 32 percent, fertilizer 37 percent, labor 47 percent, and interest expenses a staggering 73 percent. Crop prices have barely moved since the 1970s. Costs are artificially manipulated by large corporations who now control supply.

Between 2017 and 2024, America lost 160,000 farms, an average of 63 every single day. Nearly 24 million acres of farmland have vanished, lost to development, consolidation, and relentless economic pressure. The human toll is immeasurable. Suicide rates among farmers remain several times the national average. Rural hospitals are closing.

Multi-generational farms that survived the Great Depression are auctioning off their land and equipment.

This is not creative destruction. This is the systematic dismantling of rural America.

The bankruptcy of farms is yielding land for international financial institution investors who convert fake fiat money into assets through manipulated misfortune. America is edging, ever closer, to plantation style monopoly and economics.

America’s food security is gravely under threat. As farms disappear and support programs are dismantled, the United States is becoming dangerously dependent on food imports. From 2007 to 2023, imports grew from supplying 50 percent to 59 percent of fresh fruit and from 20 percent to 35 percent of fresh vegetables consumed in the United States.

In 2024, U.S. agricultural imports reached a record 213 billion dollars. The U.S. trade balance in agriculture, positive for nearly sixty years, shifted to a deficit in 2019 and by 2023 imports exceeded exports by 21 billion dollars.

This is not merely an economic issue. Every acre of domestic farmland is a national security asset. When we lose diversified family farms that grow nutrient-dense food for local and regional markets, we surrender control over the most fundamental human need and compromise our ability to feed ourselves.

Behind these losses lies a systematic consolidation of American farmland into fewer hands. When family farms fail, land is absorbed by capital backed operations and purchased by corporations and foreign interests that treat soil as a financial instrument rather than a sacred trust.

Larger operations typically employ fewer people per acre, contribute less to local economies, and operate as industrial monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Rural communities that once thrived around networks of family farms become economic deserts as those farms disappear and the social fabric unravels.

Poisoning the Land, Our Food, and Ourselves

The most profound betrayal may be the Environmental Protection Agency’s accelerating approval of PFAS pesticides.

On November 21, the week before Thanksgiving, EPA approved isocycloseram, a pesticide containing PFAS, Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as “forever chemicals.” This marked the second PFAS pesticide approved this month and the sixth proposed or approved since this administration took office.

PFAS never break down. They accumulate in soil, contaminate water, bioaccumulate in our bodies, and are linked to cancer, birth defects, immune disruption, liver damage, and reproductive harm.

The Centers for Disease Control has detected PFAS in the blood of 99 percent of Americans, including newborn babies. Now, with further approval of the EPA, these pesticides will be sprayed on vegetables Americans eat every day, romaine lettuce, broccoli, potatoes, soybeans, wheat, cotton, on golf courses and on lawns and children’s play areas,

The previously approved cyclobutrifluram breaks down into trifluoroacetic acid, now one of the most pervasive PFAS water contaminants on Earth. Scientists warn that we are exceeding a planetary boundary with this chemical, beyond which harm may become irreversible.

Research shows that 14 percent of U.S. pesticide active ingredients are now PFAS, including nearly one third of those approved in the past decade. PFAS ingredients have been found in streams and rivers nationwide, and some pesticide products contain PFOA and PFOS, among the most toxic PFAS chemicals, likely leaching from fluorinated containers.

While states such as Maine and Minnesota have moved to ban PFAS pesticides, the federal government is accelerating approvals, weakening drinking water standards, and proposing to relax reporting requirements. The EPA is now led by former chemical industry lobbyists. This is regulatory capture in its most dangerous form.

Throughout my work as Director of Policy at the Center for Food Safety and as a board member of the Rodale Institute, I have seen clearly that regenerative organic agriculture is truly pro-life agriculture, the thoughtful and committed stewardship of all living systems, the protection of nature in her wild and working landscapes.

Farmers are not merely producers. They are significant stewards of the natural world. When they farm in regenerative organic systems, they rebuild soil, support biodiversity, filter water, sustain pollinators and wildlife, and uphold the living systems upon which all life depends.

By contrast, when farmers are pushed into chemically dependent, heavily subsidized industrial systems, their farms become sacrifice zones and financial pass-throughs for the corporations that license their GMO seed, own their confined animals, and extract ever rising profits from agrichemicals and artificial inputs.

The way we farm determines not only what appears on our plates, but whether the land itself will remain capable of sustaining future generations.

When family farms disappear, we lose not only food production but accumulated wisdom, place-based knowledge, and the intergenerational commitment that makes truly regenerative agriculture possible. When our government approves chemicals that permanently contaminate that land, we betray future generations.

When I worked to help found Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2022, we worked to create a nonpartisan, bridgebuilding movement to Make America Healthy Again by supporting farmers who grow real food, rebuilding local food systems, honoring the land and its stewards, and protecting Americans from toxic chemicals.

Government says “Ha Ha” to MAHA

Rural and urban Americans alike embraced that vision. They voted for change. They believed promises to restore integrity, self-reliance, and prosperity to the land. They have received the opposite.

Captured agencies and misguided advisers have advanced the same broken systems that favor monopolies over families, imports over independence, processed commodities over real food, and chemical dependency over regenerative practice.

The heart of rural America is being broken not by foreign powers but by the very government that pledged to defend it. This is not making America healthy. This is making America sick for generations while poisoning the land farmers depend on for their livelihoods.

Last month, 115 MAHA associated farm and food advocacy organizations sent a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins calling for policies aligned with the Make America Healthy Again initiative. They presented seven specific demands:

1. Redirect USDA purchasing power by using the five billion dollar commodity budget, (forty-five percent of which currently goes to just twenty five corporations), to support independent organic and pasture based producers.

2. Restore cancelled local food programs, including the Local Food for Schools program, the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, Farm to School grants, and Regional Food Business Centers.

3. Advance healthy school meals through kitchen equipment, training, and scratch cooking to replace ultra processed foods.

4. Support organic and regenerative organic agriculture by restoring conservation funding, fully staffing the National Organic Program, providing technical assistance, and offering emergency support to organic dairy.

5. Strengthen the Natural Resources Conservation Service by restoring the twenty-four hundred lost staff positions and reinstating cancelled conservation contracts.

6. Reform agricultural checkoff programs so mandatory farmer fees are not funneled to pro-pesticide lobbying groups.

7. Ensure disaster and economic relief reaches all farmers, including fruit, vegetable, organic, and regenerative producers, not just commodity operations.

This Thanksgiving, please be conscious and grateful for those who grow, harvest, transport, and prepare our food, and those who are our food in the form of plants and animals we consume.

Take a moment to stand for the policies they, and we, deserve.

Sign and share the petition with your friends and family, calling on Secretary Rollins and the Department of Agriculture to protect farmers, restore local procurement, rebuild conservation programs, and promote genuinely healthy food for American families:

Support local and organic farms. Demand policies that put family farmers first, protect farmland from consolidation, and recognize the sacred importance of those who feed us. The future of American agriculture and American food security depends on what we do now.

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Elizabeth Kucinich is former Director of Policy at the Center for Food Safety, former board member of the Rodale Institute, and producer of Organic Rising, Hot Water, GMO OMG and Circle of Poison. She was a co-founder of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Democratic presidential campaign, the precursor to the Make America Healthy Again movement.