Food Security is National Security
Abundance Is Not Security
The United States has built one of the most productive agricultural systems in history.
Even as farms and ranches continue to fail, the extraordinary productivity of those that remain conceals the system’s growing fragility.
The Farm Security Initiative (FSI) is an independent, nonpartisan agricultural advocacy group addressing the structural forces driving farm loss, rural poverty and fragility in the American food system.
Our mission is to generate and propose federal policy that preserves competition, producer market access, regional capacity and continuity of American food production.
We’re Losing Our Farms
By the numbers:
Between 2017 and 2025, the United States lost more than 177,000 farms, an average of 61 farms per day. One farm every 24 minutes.
In 2025, the number of farms declined in every sales class except operations with annual sales of $1 million or more, a group comprising 6.2 percent of American farms.
USDA forecasts that in 2026, median income earned from farming by farm households will be negative $1,161, farm-sector debt will reach $624.7 billion and operating capital will shrink by 9.2 percent.
Bayer and Corteva supplied seed planted on 72 percent of U.S. corn acres and 66 percent of soybean acres.
CF Industries, Nutrien, Koch and Yara-USA account for 75 percent of U.S. nitrogen fertilizer.
In 2021, the four dominant beef packers, Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Cargill and National Beef, handled 81 percent of steer and heifer slaughter.
The four largest hog packers, Smithfield Foods, JBS USA, Tyson Foods and Clemens Food Group, handled 65 percent of hog slaughter.
In 2025, BNSF and Union Pacific originated 67 percent of U.S. Class I grain carloads.
The immediate cost of this concentration is not an empty grocery shelf. The statistics come first: the consolidation by highly capitalized, multinational corporations, the declining farm numbers, the negative farm income, the farm failures, the rural poverty.
The immediate cost is another family leaving the land and another rural community made poorer. The empty grocery shelf comes later.
The Problem Is Not the Farmer
Farmers are told to borrow, diversify, hedge or adapt. For decades, the industry refrain has been “Get big or get out.” But management cannot solve the basic arithmetic of buying from concentrated suppliers and selling to concentrated buyers.
Farmers and ranchers commit labor, money, seed, fertilizer, equipment, insurance and land without knowing what their crops or livestock will bring months or years in the future. Their livelihood depends on the margin between costs and sale prices, but both are shaped in markets dominated by the multinational companies named above.
Those companies act within the law and according to ordinary business practice when they protect their own margins. They have neither an obligation nor a market incentive to ensure that an individual farm earns a profit or survives. Their behavior is entirely lawful and rational.
Farms and ranches are the economic engines of rural America. The money they earn moves through equipment dealers, veterinarians, banks and businesses and supports the local tax base. When a greater share of the profit is captured by companies headquartered elsewhere, wealth created in rural America leaves the region and accrues elsewhere as corporate earnings and shareholder returns.
A failing farm takes a family, its identity, history, home, livelihood, expertise and future off the land and leaves an entire community poorer.
The Problem Is Structural
Consider a rancher with cattle ready for market. If nearby beef packers don’t have capacity, it costs the rancher money in feed, interest, ongoing care, overweight charges and risk. Hauling them farther to a different packer adds the cost of freight and further reduces profitability.
The packer controls something the rancher must have: timely access to processing and market. That is a control point.
The same relationship repeats throughout agriculture. Before production begins, farmers depend on seed, fertilizer, equipment, financing and insurance. After harvest, they depend on processors, storage facilities, transportation and buyers. Wherever only one or a few practical choices remain, the companies at that point
determine availability, price, timing and terms.
The farm is where all of those prices and terms meet, but the farmer controls almost none of them.
No company needs to coordinate with another. Each can act lawfully and rationally to protect its own business. But a higher input price, unavailable processing capacity, additional freight or a lower bid all land on the same farm balance sheet. When their combined effect leaves no viable margin, the producer absorbs the loss.
The companies change by commodity, but the structure remains the same. Power accumulates at control points. Cost and risk accumulate at the farm.
Current federal policy largely compensates producers after that structure has generated losses. It does not change the structure itself. The United States repeatedly pays to keep farmers in business while preserving the structure that drives them out.
To protect our food supply, the law must change.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 2027
AAA 2027 establishes public guardrails for agricultural markets before farm failure requires another federal rescue.
It:
restores price transparency and market integrity
limits concentration and single-point dependence
rebuilds distributed regional processing, storage and transportation
provides a limited and voluntary buffer against below-cost market pricing
establishes fair agricultural contract standards
gives food production priority for essential resources during declared scarcity
requires sufficient practical regional capacity to withstand the loss of a major facility
AAA 2027 does not replace private markets or guarantee farm income. It establishes rules designed to preserve competition, producer market access, regional capacity and continuity of American food production.
[Button: Read AAA 2027]
Results From the 2026 Farm Listening Tour
We listened to farmers from 19 states; they had a lot to say.
Why This Matters Now
The current system is optimized for efficiency under ideal conditions. It is not designed to survive disruption.
Trade shocks, interest-rate shifts, infrastructure failure, resource competition and geopolitical instability now propagate through a highly consolidated system with minimal redundancy.
The results are predictable:
losses are absorbed at the farm level
consolidation accelerates
resilience declines
This is not cyclical instability. It is structural exposure.
What This Requires
Food systems are critical infrastructure.
Other systems of comparable importance, banking, energy, airline travel and telecommunications, are governed with explicit rules to prevent cascading failure. Food production is not.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 2027 applies the same standard:
Design the system to survive stress, not merely perform under ideal conditions.