Bernie Sanders Takes on Monsanto, Big Ag Monopolies With Plan to 'Revitalize Rural America'

During a campaign stop in Iowa on Sunday, Bernie Sanders unveiled an ambitious plan to take on agriculture behemoths like Bayer-Monsanto and ensure rural communities have the necessary resources to thrive “economically and ecologically.”

Sanders’s proposals, collectively titled “Revitalizing Rural America,” would break up agribusiness monopolies with “Roosevelt-style trust-busting laws,” reform patent laws to protect farmers from the predatory practices of agribusiness corporations, and pass national legislation to allow farmers to repair their own equipment.

“Maybe I’m kind of radical here, but I think a farmer who produces the food that we eat is maybe almost as important as some crook on Wall Street who destroys the economy.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

“Here in Iowa, a third of the entire state’s economy is tied directly to agriculture,” Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, told the audience gathered at a rally in the city of Osage.

“More and more of the state’s agriculture is being dominated by just a handful of large corporations, who, it seems to me from a distance, own the Iowa state legislature and legislatures throughout this country,” the Vermont senator said.

Because of the immense power and consolidation of the agricultural industry, Sanders said, “family farmers are going bankrupt and in many ways are being treated like modern day indentured servants.”

“What you want, and what I want, are more family farms in America, not more factory farms,” said Sanders.

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