What a Harris Presidency Would Mean for Our Food and Agriculture

Published September 23, 2024

Categories

Food

From antitrust enforcement to working to lower prices, Harris’s record makes her the clear pick for progress toward a fair, sustainable food system.

From antitrust enforcement to working to lower prices, Harris’s record makes her the clear pick for progress toward a fair, sustainable food system.

At a campaign rally this August, Vice President Kamala Harris had a welcome announcement for all of us facing sky-high food prices. She pledged to “take on price gouging and bring down costs” on “Day One” of her presidency. She also unveiled a plan to revise rules on price-setting for mega-corporations and give more power to state prosecutors and the Federal Trade Commission to go after price-gougers.

This couldn’t have come soon enough. Over the past few years, the cost to feed a family of four has shot up more than double the rate of inflation. Harris’s announcement signals that she is taking our concerns seriously and has concrete plans to address them.

Her plan for price-gouging comes at the tail end of one of the most anti-monopoly, pro-competition administrations in decades. As vice president, Harris helped usher in a new era of antitrust enforcement to protect small and medium-sized farms, and she helped tackle high grocery prices at the root by going after Big Ag. Here’s what we expect from a Harris presidency when it comes to food and agriculture:

Harris is Tackling Prices and Corporate Greed

During the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages and supply chain disruptions — both real and corporation-fabricated — led to soaring food prices. Many food and agriculture companies took advantage to raise prices even more and keep them high, even after supply chains stabilized. 

While families struggle to get by, CEOs and shareholders are raking in the dough. For example, meat companies Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride, the largest and second-largest poultry producers in the country, saw major profit gains since before the pandemic. 

We cannot allow this to continue. A few corporations have a vice-like grip on our entire food system, allowing them too much power over prices. The result — both families and farmers get squeezed. The only ones who win are the mega-corporations.

Harris’s moves on price-gouging are welcome, but we can and must push her to continue tackling corporate power at its root.

Harris is Blocking Big Ag’s Attempts to Get Bigger

Megacorporations have amassed size and dominance from decades of lax enforcement of our antitrust laws by previous administrations. These laws are meant to prevent mergers and dirty business tactics that allow a few huge corporations to gather even more power. However, Vice President Harris has helped usher in some long-overdue changes. 

The Biden-Harris administration’s Executive Order on competition began a new era of antitrust enforcement. This order kick-started moves to better enforce the Packers & Stockyards Act, one of our keystone competition laws for the meat and poultry industries. 

Additionally, under Biden and Harris, the Federal Trade Commission updated its guidelines for intervening in merger deals, leading to the agency’s lawsuit to block a mega-merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. This merger poses a huge threat to workers’ wages and consumers’ prices. We will call on a future Harris-Walz administration to stop the merger and others like it, like a recently announced merger between food giants Mars and Kellanova.

The Harris campaign understands the gravity of this issue and its impact on consumers. In August, it released a statement saying a Harris administration would “crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers.”

Harris’s Advocacy for Farmers and Food Workers

The administration’s antitrust actions won’t just help families — they’ll help farmers who have long suffered Big Ag’s abuses. The same monopoly power that allows corporations to price gouge has also allowed them to lower the prices they pay for farmers’ crops.

This has made farming alone unsustainable for many farm families. In fact, from 1996 to 2018, the median farm income for farm households was negative. By breaking up Big Ag, Harris would help farmers finally make a good living. 

Harris also has a long track record of fighting for farmworkers. Before becoming vice president, she was the senator of California, the country’s biggest agricultural state. Many of the industry’s workers are undocumented immigrants who lack labor protections.

As a senator, Harris introduced legislation to instate overtime pay for farmworkers several times. She also introduced legislation to require safety standards for workers who face extreme heat, including those working in fields.

She’s advocated for restaurant and grocery workers too. In 2019, Harris marched with McDonald’s employees fighting for a $15-an-hour wage. During the pandemic, she called on corporate executives to reinstate hazard pay for grocery store workers. 

Now, the Biden-Harris administration has proposed new rules to protect workers from extreme heat. It also launched investments into meat processing plants as counterweights to Big Meat corporations and funding for Black farmers that seeks to redress discrimination they’ve experienced from federal programs. 

A Harris-Walz administration will continue this progress and give us the opportunity to push for more policies toward a fair and sustainable food system.

With a Harris Presidency, We Can Continue the Fight for a Fair Food System 

From affordable food to clean water to a livable climate, we are in dire need of leaders whom we can work with toward progress. While one party has made important strides and opens the doors for us to push even further, the other would set us back years, even decades. 

The Republican party doesn’t even mention rural America in its platform. A main goal of Trump’s presidency is to tear down regulations and open the gates for corporations to increase their power. This will have devastating impacts on families and farmers.

Meanwhile, Harris’s plans and actions on food and agriculture signal a sea change. On top of facing down Big Ag, she has a track record of defending factory-farmed animal welfare and advocating for more support for families facing hunger. To further defend farmers, workers, and families, she must be able to advance important policies from the White House. 

Nevertheless, these policies are relatively small steps in the right direction, and we need to push her for even greater change. With Harris in office, we have the opportunity to do so — while a second Trump presidency will close off many avenues for headway. Getting Harris elected will give us the best avenue we have to use our collective power to fight for a truly fair, sustainable food system.

There are so many ways you can help us get out the vote this election season. Check out events near you!