The very term MAHA, an acronym for “Make America Healthy Again,” sows division in many quarters. But the sentiment should hardly be controversial. Whatever Americans might think of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Anthony Fauci; or the various partisan battles at HHS, the populist MAHA rebellion is rapidly and dramatically raising public awareness about chronic disease and the central role of processed foods in causing it. Yet there is a huge problem lurking here: how to improve nutrient density in foods without either destroying farm profits or spiking grocery store prices.
Flipping More Than the Food Pyramid
It is all fine and good – even crucially important – that the nation’s “food pyramid” was flipped upside down to favor healthy, whole foods including fats and protein rather than prioritizing an overabundance of (often nutritionally empty) carbohydrates. Remember how federal agencies and the medical community told Americans that butter, eggs, and red meat were all bad for you? Turns out that was a profit-driven boondoggle. But righting that wrong does not right the agricultural ship. MAHA has much work yet to do.
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Creating a new graphic design in a bureaucratic cubicle does nothing to procure the healthy foods needed to fulfill those new nutrition recommendations. Consumers are listening to the MAHA message. They are scrutinizing labels, studying test results, avoiding hormones and PFAS, and seeking fresh produce. The stock prices and earnings of processed food manufacturers have been suffering. However, only 1% of US agricultural production is organic. Where will the supply come from to meet this new demand?
This is likely the industrial siren that sings routinely in President Donald Trump’s ear: Federal subsidies must continue to be directed to chemical-dependent industrial mono-crops, or else food prices will spike, and there will be anarchy in the streets. There is a thread of truth in this doomy admonition – the United States has become more dependent on these modern systems than any nation on Earth. Of course, as the MAHA movement is revealing, that’s exactly why we are all sick.
A Fatal Industrial Prescription
The prescription to double down on industrial agricultural production is a failed gambit. Industrial agriculture not only reduces nutrient density and compromises freshness and local economies, but it also destroys vital soils and contaminates waterways. While corporate actors cling tightly to the regulatory and subsidy capture that has enriched them at the expense of human health, the problem worsens. The yawning gap between consumer demand and trustworthy producer supply continues to expand.
Here is presented the hidden challenge lurking within what might be termed the MAHA consumer awakening. How does the nation improve food quality without sparking runaway inflation? How does it provide affordable nutrient-dense food not just to wealthy suburbanites but to urban food deserts and SNAP beneficiaries?
As farmer and food rights activist Joel Salatin explains in his upcoming book, Food Emancipation: Unshackling America’s Sustenance, American consumers have brought this crisis upon ourselves. Our eating and shopping choices have fueled the products that sicken us. They have also destroyed the lion’s share of small family farms. The average American farmer is now about 61 years old, which Salatin explains means that about half of all US farmland will change hands in the next 15-20 years (300 million acres, according to the Organic Trade Association). Meanwhile, consumers are paying more for food every year while farmers are paid less. According to the USDA, farmers today receive about 5.8 cents per retail food dollar, compared with 40 cents in the mid-20th century. This is a recipe for disaster.
Courting Future Farmers
Why would any young person seek a career in farming if it is a guaranteed business failure? And who will buy up America’s farmland? – foreign nations? Bill Gates? Big Ag?
As more Americans deepen their understanding of this unfolding crisis, solutions will emerge alongside the political will (by both parties?) to address it. Many consumers seek organic foods, but regenerative agricultural methods that reduce erosion and chemical applications are being embraced by more conventional farmers facing high input costs. (The closing of the Strait of Hormuz has contributed to sharp inflation in many synthetic fertilizers and other agricultural inputs). The country must shift from chemical dependency to self-reliance and soil-building practices.
A new generation of farmers understands that measuring everything in dollars for short-term profits destroys not only food and soil quality but long-term economic viability. As Mark Ratliff of Farm Transition Services, LLC, explains: “Organic farming isn’t about replacing every synthetic input with a more expensive organic one. It’s about building healthier soils that naturally become more productive over time.” Conventional farmers are learning this truth – they can save money in the short term by applying fewer chemicals and earn higher returns in the long term by improving soil health and further decreasing costly inputs.
But there are entrenched hurdles to farmers erected over decades that have sealed our current dependency on processed foods, and they must be dismantled. The greatest impediment to the small or nouveau farm is regulatory burden. Some argue that this was by design, but that is irrelevant to seeking a way out.
The MAHA Food Production Pyramid
In his upcoming new book, the passionate (and self-styled lunatic) libertarian farmer Salatin identifies this problem and posits solutions, proclaiming that:
“Young, enterprising next-generation farmers desperately need a profitable on-ramp to enter agriculture as a viable vocation. ….Food emancipation allowing blanket food transaction choice between voluntary consenting adults without the government’s permission, would unleash thousands of farm entrepreneurs on our neighborhoods…. Nothing could offer as much opportunity and viable business development as Uberizing our food system. The explosion of more affordable and higher quality food options that would follow a food freedom policy would revolutionize America’s foodscape. It would chip away at the food oligarchy, and maybe even eliminate it. It would give farmers access to lucrative value-added convenience food dollars. And it would give consumers a plethora of food options rather than simply a choice of label colors coming out of one processing plant.”
As Americans become more informed about the sources of their food and how it is processed, this “food emancipation” message will gain traction. It is not merely an outdated nutritional pyramid that needs reversing: it is the entire industrial monolith that has inflicted chronic disease through the license offered by uninformed “consumers.”
As Joel Salatin offers, hopefully, “Misplaced trust in USDA Big Food and Big Ag has allowed our nation to lose its freedoms and food options. The time to claw back food choice is now. The time to take the shackles off our sustenance is now.”
You are what you eat, so stop eating Twinkies and Pringles! Instead, support your local farmstand or neighborhood farmer. Healthier, fresh food is the foundation of good health. It is also a core tenet of MAHA!
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