Dear John,

Gilles Stockton is one of our Farmer Heroes because he exposes corporate power in the cattle industry: "We need to renegotiate from a position that says citizens have rights, workers have rights, communities have rights. Trade agreements should look and protect their concerns. And corporations should be subservient to those rights."

Knowing where your food comes from is a fundamental right. Because of clear labels, you can choose to buy apples from New England or Mexico, and you can know if your tomatoes were grown in California or Canada. That’s not true with beef.

A Senate bill for Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (M-COOL) was introduced in 2021 and is picking up steam (and is sponsored by senators from both parties). It guarantees that eaters would know where their beef was born, raised, slaughtered, and processed. It also helps create a level playing field for American ranchers by helping them get a fair price.

Since we launched this action last week, Farm Aid supporters have sent more than 1,200 emails to their senators asking them to stand up for American ranchers. Will you join them?

At our festival each year, artists, farmers and advocates come together to talk about issues on our FarmYard stage. This past year, one of these discussions was about our changing climate. The panel included Nathaniel Rateliff and Joseph Pope III from Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats; John Cleary from Organic Valley; and farmer Martin Beck from New England Grassfed at Cloverbud Ranch in Rhode Island.

They discussed how agriculture is a significant contributor of global greenhouse gases that are making the planet hotter, weather more extreme and threatening the critical food systems we depend on every day. They also noted how small and family farmers, who disproportionately pay for the reckless practices of larger corporate farming operations, are very much part of the solution.