About the Farm Security Initiative
Who We Are
The Farm Security Initiative (FSI) is a nonpartisan effort focused on structural failures embedded in the design of the American agricultural economy.
In the current system, a small number of highly capitalized firms influence input costs on the front end and market pricing on the back end, while individual producers operate in between with limited control over either.
Farmers commit capital, labor and land before prices are known, yet are required to absorb the full impact of price volatility, input shocks and external market disruptions after those commitments are locked in.
This is not traditional market risk. It is structural risk transferred onto participants who cannot effectively price, hedge or withstand it.
The result is predictable: chronic margin compression, succession failure, forced consolidation and the gradual erosion of the local institutions that once stabilized rural economies.
These outcomes are not incidental. They are the direct and repeatable consequence of how the system is designed.
FSI exists to correct that design.
Our Mission
FSI exists to correct structural imbalances in the agricultural system by realigning how risk is assigned, absorbed and managed.
Through federal guardrails and pre-season mechanisms, FSI works to reduce systemic exposure, stabilize production and preserve the continuity of the food system the nation depends on.
Why FSI Exists
The need for this work is not theoretical. It is visible in the operating conditions of American agriculture today.
Farmers operate inside a system where key risks, input shocks, price volatility and capital exposure, are largely uncontrollable at the individual level, yet are borne almost entirely by producers.
When those risks materialize, the consequences extend beyond individual farms. Margins compress, reinvestment stalls and producers are forced into liquidity-driven decisions that prioritize survival over long-term viability. At the same time, consolidation advances at key control points, inputs, processing and distribution, where pricing power concentrates, enabling margin extraction on both sides of the market while producers remain responsible for absorbing the system’s residual risk.
These conditions are not temporary. They are structural and increasingly determinative of how the American food system functions.
Without mechanisms to address how risk is assigned and absorbed, the United States becomes more dependent on a food system that is less resilient, less locally anchored and more vulnerable to systemic disruption.
FSI exists to correct that imbalance by advancing structural reforms and pre-season mechanisms that reduce systemic exposure, stabilize production and preserve continuity across the food system.
About Founder Stephen Banks
Stephen Banks is an independent researcher and writer focused on structural risk in the American food system.
He is a U.S. Army veteran and the founder of Division21, Inc., a construction company he grew from startup to sixty employees and $20 million in annual revenue, performing commercial and federal projects throughout the United States. His work involved complex, failure-sensitive systems including hospital infrastructure and electrical distribution.
This experience informs his approach to agriculture as a system of risk identification, assignment and management rather than solely a production industry.
Following his retirement in 2019, Banks began traveling extensively through rural America, speaking directly with farmers and agricultural operators to understand the structural conditions shaping the industry.
His work integrates field observation with system-level analysis to identify points of failure and develop practical, preemptive solutions.