Tell Congress: Stand up to Big Ag with a Green New Deal that addresses agriculture!

The science is clear: We cannot avert climate chaos if we don’t quickly transform our food system away from pesticide-intensive, corporate-controlled industrial agriculture. The planet can't wait -- we need Congress to pass a strong Green New Deal that fixes our food system.

Dear Representative,

In the face of worsening climate chaos and massive economic inequities, I support the urgent need for a Green New Deal. I’m writing today to ask you to do the same — specifically, I’m writing to demand a Green New Deal that transforms our broken food system to help save our climate while ensuring good jobs, fair prices for farmers and sustainable, healthy food for all.

Agriculture and industrial food production generate nearly one-third of all climate-change emissions, making the food sector a leading producer of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. These emissions stem from industrial agriculture’s systemic reliance on energy-intensive toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, intensive tillage in large monocrop farming systems, immense confined animal feeding operations, and food processing, transport and waste. At the same time, climate upheaval threatens our nation’s food security and is costing taxpayers, farmers and food companies tens of billions of dollars a year at a minimum.

This highly consolidated industrial food system is rapidly depleting vital soil and water resources and biodiversity upon which our food future depends. It is producing widespread poverty, inequality, hunger and public health crises, and an economic crisis in which rural farming communities are losing thousands of family farms each year. In addition, our industrial, chemical-intensive food production system puts farmers, farmworkers and rural communities at increased risk of exposure to pesticides linked to chronic and life-threatening diseases and increases the likelihood of workplace injuries. 
  
Fortunately, there are solutions — well-demonstrated, effective and profitable agricultural practices at all scales in all regions of the country — that can help reduce pollution and repair our environment and climate while revitalizing communities across the country. By embracing the policies and principles outlined below within the Green New Deal, Congress can promote a rapid and just transition to an American food system that is ecologically sustainable and resilient to climate upheaval, and that ensures good jobs, healthy food and better health outcomes for all communities.

The original New Deal helped America’s farmers survive the Great Depression and feed our nation while restoring farmlands and soil. The Green New Deal can do even better: restoring our climate by regenerating soil and biodiversity while ensuring fair prices and family-sustaining livable wages and for the farmers, ranchers, fishers and workers who bring food to our tables.

To reduce emissions and bolster our nation’s resilience in the face of the climate crisis, we must enact policies that transform unsustainable industrial agriculture, reduce food sector consolidation and empower farmers and ranchers to adopt organic and agroecological practices. These policies must support diversified and ecologically regenerative farming techniques that reduce greenhouse gases and other pollution, boost soil health and sequester carbon in soil — enhancing local and regional food security, economic well-being and biodiversity. With these policies and support, farmers and ranchers can increase their income, and spur new jobs and businesses that are meeting the growing demand for local, healthy, pasture-based, plant-based and organic foods. 
 
Congress, as well as state and local governments, can expand these benefits by adopting healthy and climate-friendly food procurement and tax policies, anti-trust measures that help reverse food sector consolidation, and fair markets and compensation for the farmers, fishers and workers who produce the food and fiber we all depend on. These policies will enable food producers to help restore the climate and revitalize the food future we all share.
  
For the Green New Deal to be effective, the people who make our meals possible — America’s farmers, ranchers, fishers, farmworkers, and food industry workers — must be at the negotiating table. Additionally, solutions must be community-driven, equitable, regionally specific and appropriate, and must promote the leadership of frontline communities disproportionately burdened by our climate crisis and by the unsustainable industrial food system. The food system’s profound ecological, social justice and economic problems are interconnected and cannot be addressed piecemeal. The Green New Deal presents a unique opportunity to address the climate crisis and the deep inequities that are a fundamental threat to us all.

Science shows conclusively that we have no time to lose, and that making fundamental changes to our food and farming system is urgent and central to stabilizing our climate and ensuring food security for current and future generations. Thank you for considering my opinion and for prioritizing the development and passage of an ambitious Green New Deal – one that helps to transform our broken food system and addresses the climate crisis.

Sincerely,

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