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New Website Shines a Light on Provisions in Ideologically Charged Document
I have tried to mostly steer clear from politics since I launched Local Food Forum in 2021. This isn't easy, given that my 30-year first career was as a political analyst in Washington, D.C., but I hold to the belief that the better food movement should not be a partisan matter: It is, simply, good for health, the environment, rural and urban economies, family farms, entrepreneurs in the good food space, and more.
But in an era when everything gets politicized, if I see something that I view as a threat to the gains we have made toward a healthy, more sustainable, fairer, more humane and more economically resilient food system, I'm damn well going to raise a red flag about it.
Which brings me to Project 2025. This is a document produced by the hard-right Heritage Foundation, and it contains a wish list of uncountable program cuts and eliminations.
Project 2025 has become a major touchpoint in this year's presidential campaign. Democrats contend that the 920-page tome is a roadmap to how Republican Donald Trump would govern if he were to return to the White House.
Trump has tried to distance himself from the controversy, claiming that he is not involved with Project 2025, but it strikes me as at least disingenuous given that most of it was written by people who served during Trump's term as president. It's also dubious given the reports that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, has written the foreword to an upcoming book by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, the godfather of Project 2025.
The food and farm provisions of the project have gotten relatively little attention given the firestorms over higher-profile issues such as abortion and immigration. But thanks to Barn Raiser — an important independent publication about issues facing small farmers and rural communities — I learned about a new website called 25andme. Produced by Rajat Paharia, Google's former director of product development, it presents what Project 2025 aims to do, in granular detail, documented with links to the relevant pages of the document.
Click on the topic "Farmers" and you'll find that Project 2025 would:
End support of climate-smart agricultural policies
Eliminate the Conservation Reserve Program
Cap and phase down the H-2A Visa Program, on which both small and large farms rely to hire laborers they need to tend and harvest their crops
Reduce how much the government pays to help farmers buy crop insurance, a provision that could financially harm both large and small farmers.
But let's not think that Project 2025 is only targeting our community of small-to-medium-sized farms. It aims to slash federal subsidies and price supports that are the lifeblood of the large-scale conventional farming industry. Provisions include:
Eliminate farm subsidies like the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program and the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program. This means that farmers will no longer get money from the government to help them when prices for the crops they grow go down or when they do not harvest as much as they expected.
Stop paying farmers twice for price and revenue losses during the same year. This means that farmers will get less money from the government to help them when prices for the crops they grow go down or when they do not harvest as much as they expected.
Repeal the federal sugar program, which protects U.S. sugar farmers from foreign sugar growers.
If you have conventional farming friends, you might want to make sure they know this.
The document also includes provisions that would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and raise the eligibility bar for many of those receiving or seeking benefits.
Please share this post with your associates. If this information has piqued your interest (or anger), click the button below to visit the 25andme site and learn more.
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