The 2026 farm bill quietly hands big tech control over American farmland. Here’s the fine print

Posted on March 15, 2026 by admin

By: Anthony Pahnke, Vice President of Family Farm Defenders and an Associate Professor of International Relations, San Francisco State University

Originally published in Fortune Magazine, 3/14/2026

Tucked inside the 2026 Farm Bill is a provision that would reimburse farmers 90% of the cost of adopting AI and precision agriculture technologies — 15 percentage points above the normal EQIP cap. The private sector standards governing those technologies would be set not by the USDA, but by the tech industry itself. This could be a Trojan horse of sorts for something called “precision agriculture” and artificial intelligence (AI), which big tech firms will be able take advantage of farmers and further wrest control over the food system from them.

Agri Drone Sprayer – photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Besides receiving the attention from the ever-dwindling number of farmers in our country, the Farm Bill cycle usually comes and goes every five years without anyone raising much of a fuss. In fact, the 2018 Bill expired in 2023 and has been renewed three times since without much commotion.

This cycle portends like those others, as parts of the legislation’s most costly and contentious sections, or titles, like Nutrition, were shoehorned into Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB)’ last July.

But closer inspection of the current Farm Bill that is now meandering through Congress —entitled The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 — reveals some potentially troubling inclusions worth digging into.

A Farm Bill Cycle Like No Others

A quick review of the current House version of the Farm Bill doesn’t reveal anything too unusual. The legislation’s 11 titles is the same number as what was in the law back in 2018. Still, how “precision agriculture” appears in the Conservation Title should raise some eyebrows.

Not only is precision agriculture defined, but it is complemented by a list of what are deemed appropriate technologies, including GPS, yield monitors, data management software, and the particularly strange sounding, “Internet of Things and telematics technologies.”

That last bizarre phrase, which most would probably consider a typo, is actually a concept that abounds in tech company circles. One definition from an industry leader notes that the “Internet of Things,” or IoT, is the “network of physical objects — “things” — that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems.”

Paired with this definition is the government opening the way for corporations to have, well, a “field day” with precision agriculture, including for AI. Tucked away in the Rural Development Title, is the “promoting precision agriculture” subsection. AI, we are told particularly, is to be guided by “private sector-led interconnectivity standards, guidelines, and best practices.”

How Taxpayers Would Subsidize Big Tech’s Entry Into Farming

This language lays the groundwork for the Farm Bill to funnel taxpayer dollars to make AI an integral part of our food and farm system. Specifically, for farmers who adopt precision agriculture as part of conservation practices, particularly through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), they will be reimbursed for 90% of the cost. This exceeds the normal percentage of what is provided by EQIP cost-share grants, which usually max out at 75% of what a farmer spends on practices like setting up a greenhouse or improving their irrigation system.

The irony should be noticed that EQIP, a program with the purpose of bringing conservation into farming, is now being used to fund forms of technology powered by data centers that drain our water, cause air pollution, and gobble up farmland.

Private Sector Rules, Public Dollars

Farmers are no strangers to technology. From installing robotic milkers on dairies, to purchasing tractors and replacing horses at the start of the twentieth century, they have always had to get their products to market while factoring in the costs of the inputs that make that journey possible.

But in terms of the current Farm Bill, the incentives for big tech are new. It’s true that precision agriculture first appeared in the 1985 legislation, but without any specific technologies listed. Subsequent Farm Bills also refer to technological change and modernization, but either in more general terms, or for the USDA to improve its accounting practices.

Such favoritism of one form of technology, being developed by firms not traditionally involved in food production, stands to further wrest decision-making from farmers as it exposes them to privacy concerns.

Farmers Have Seen This Playbook Before

In terms of producer control, consider the ongoing debates about right-to-repair laws. Here, corporations retain proprietary technology on the parts of machines they sell, leading farmers to pay for their assistance if something breaks down. Such use of corporate power limits farmers’ ability to use machinery that they purchase outright while subjecting them to unnecessary service charges.

Control concerns have also been at the center of seed technology debates.

One controversy on genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) is how with their use, instead of farmers retaining seeds year after year and controlling their development, producers become dependent on companies for receiving this necessary input. There are also cases where companies have prosecuted farmers who unknowingly find GM plants in their fields, and who then became the target of expensive lawsuits.

The Labor Shortage Argument Doesn’t Hold

Detractors will note the labor-saving advantages of using AI. Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, made this point last year during a press conference that was meant to address worries of ongoing labor shortages as Trump’s mass deportation campaign ramped up.

But AI still needs knowledge from practitioners. Changing climate conditions, along with standard run-of-the-mill challenges that arise from dealing with animals, requires a new generation of farmers who are versatile and resilient. Put otherwise, we need more producers, trained in diverse production practices and supported by government policies that promote local markets more than cloud computing initiatives that pad the pockets of rich elites and further damage our environment.

What a Pro-Farmer Bill Would Actually Do

Instead programs like the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP), which do appear in this latest Farm Bill, should receive more attention and funding, along with other proposals like the Justice for Black Farmers Act that creates a pathway for young people to get on the land and stay there.

The Farm Bill is meant to promote agriculture. This latest version will grow not our food system, but corporate profits. Not more fruits and vegetables, but data will be harvested. Trump often professes his support for farmers. It’s time for his administration to actually help them, forwarding a Farm Bill that keeps producers on the land and brings new ones to the industry rather than enriching tech billionaires.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has a straightforward choice: redirect the EQIP precision agriculture premium back into programs that actually put farmers on the land. Reallocating even half of those enhanced cost-share dollars to the Local Agriculture Market Program would more than double LAMP’s current budget — and fund the next generation of producers rather than the next generation of data centers. The Justice for Black Farmers Act offers a parallel path: land access, not algorithmic dependency. If Trump’s administration wants to prove its support for farmers is more than a talking point, the markup table is where that proof gets written.

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Back by Popular Demand – Palestine Solidarity Seed Packages for 2026!

Posted on February 12, 2026 by admin

Food sovereignty is critical for any community’s survival – and this is especially true in times of armed conflict, land grabbing, and forced relocation. Thankfully, there are many ongoing efforts to preserve the diversity and vitality of Palestine’s amazing agricultural heritage. You, too can support Palestinean food sovereignty by planting seed and sharing the bounty this coming 2026 planting season.

Each solidarity seed package contains a brochure, button, and five heirloom varieties: ‘Small Jadu’i’ watermelon; ‘Yakteen’ bottle gourd; ‘Kusa’ squash; ‘Abu Al-Rub’ coriander; and ‘Molokhia’ greens.

Suggested donation $75 (includes postage). Proceeds will go to support food sovereignty work in Palestine through affiliates of La Via Campesina. You can make a donation on our website and/or email familyfarmdefenders at yahoo.com for more info.

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One Farmer’s New Year Resolutions for Our Troubled Times

Posted on February 3, 2026 by admin

By: John E. Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders

An abridged version of this article was recently published in the Capitol Hill Citizen

The Grinch really stole Xmas last year for many family farmers – and sadly his spirit lurks both in the White House and in Congress, across the political aisle. Many folks I know could see the disaster coming, but – unlike watching a train wreck – it just kept getting worse and worse and worse…

First came the DOGE chain saw, supposedly cutting “waste and fraud”, but that was just a cover for an ideological scorched earth program. The gutting of local food procurement support was especially mean spirited. Many farmers had signed contracts for produce they had already grown – here in WI some just had to pile up their “homeless” food on the curb. Other farmers got stuck paying for infrastructure they only built because of promised cost share reimbursement. I felt very lucky that we received our first ever USDA grant check to build a hoophouse a full year earlier. The FDA lost 20% of its staff devoted to inspecting imported food, but – not to worry! An Aug. 2025 ProPublica article reported that an AI large language model (LLM) – dubbed Elsa – was going to fill that void (and hopefully recognize salmonella when it sees it…) The National Organic Program (NOP) lost a third of its already limited staffing, even as organic remains the fastest growing segment of our food/farm sector (for many good reasons). The sacrifice of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) will leave folks with even fewer choices in an anemic rural media landscape. Farmers now joke that National Weather Service cuts mean grandma’s wind chime is the only early storm warning system left.

Nonstop tariff hikes against friends and foes alike was round two – this inane trade war even targeted islands populated by penguins. And not to forget, this was on top of earlier tariffs imposed by Biden. Fearing the worst, I had done a preemptive globalization assessment of our own farm shed right after Trump’s inauguration. Sure enough, I found tomato twine from Guatemala, wire fencing from Vietnam, landscape fabric from India, paperboard cartons from Canada. Being organic, at least our farm was not dependent upon imported synthetic fertilizer or hightech equipment like many larger conventional farmers. As price takers in markets controlled by oligopolies, farmers were forced to swallow much of the tariff tax (just like hapless consumers). In a different historical context, such autocratic fiat would have prompted a major tea party revolt.

Then came the last nails in the coffin, a prolonged government shutdown, fresh attacks on federal food assistance (aka SNAP) and government subsidized healthcare (aka ACA), as well as unprecedented violence inflicted by a rogue ICE agency, hellbent on rounding up and deporting anyone they deem to be undocumented. If all this sounds familiar, it should be since it has happened many times before under both parties. I’m not sure if it is just crude malevolence or elitist indifference towards real working people that has become so bipartisan – perhaps its both.

About 12% of people in the U.S. are hungry, but that figure climbs to 15% if one is rural. Over 47 million Americans now rely on SNAP to put food on their table – and contrary to stereotypes – the highest reliance on SNAP is by poor working white families in mostly rural counties. When I joined labor activists and furloughed workers for a Nov. 6th protest outside Sen Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) office, I not only brought winter squash to share, but also the sheaf of SNAP checks I had received – 10% of my total 2025 farmer market sales (not huge, but every bit counts). I’m proud to offer fresh local produce to those in need in my community, and that was the original idea behind the first 1939 Food Stamp pilot. Yes, there are many problems with SNAP. Walmart should not be allowed to siphon off $2 billion per month from SNAP and then also tell their own workers to sign up knowing full well they will be among the working poor. Such abuse can easily be prevented – and is hardly a reason to throw out the SNAP baby with the bath water. Making SNAP recipients pick vegetables or pluck chickens in exchange, though, is a cruel joke – especially when 40% of them are children.

According to KFF, an estimated 4 million rural people (among them 25% of U.S. farmers – myself included) also rely on the ACA for healthcare – and the number one cause of farm bankruptcy remains a medical emergency. Rural healthcare is already abysmal with corporate consolidation meaning the loss of smaller clinics and access to local doctors/nurses. $130+ billion in DOGE inspired cuts to rural Medicaid over the next decade will only add insult to injury. One WI farmer told me over the holidays that the loss of subsidies for her own family and a handful of seasonal employees would mean a 100% increase to a nearly $8000 ACA premium – ouch! During the 2011 “Cheddar Uprising” in WI one of the most frequent signs decorating the 50+ tractors that arrived to support the 150,000 protesters inside and outside the State Capitol was “Badgercare for All.” This is one of the most difficult things to explain to farmer friends who visit from abroad (if they can get a visa…) Their universal public healthcare systems cost so much less and produce so much better results than our pathetic corporatized version.

The New Year is often bittersweet for many rural people – there is the anticipation of spring (ordering seeds, fixing tools, getting ready for the sap run), but at the same time it’s when bills come due and some choose to give up. This is when I dread most picking up the phone, worried that I will hear about another farm foreclosure or suicidal intention. Farmers lost $28+ billion in revenue last year (and total farm debt is expected to climb to $590 billion), making Trump’s $12 billion “Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) package a drop in the bucket – especially since the vast majority of that will go to commodity growers (cotton, rice, soy, corn) who are already first at the trough. Those of us who grow real healthy food get hardly anything in the way of federal support.

The politics of rightward resentment (to partly invoke the title of Kathleen Cramer’s 2016 book) run deep in America’s Heartland, but so does the legacy of progressive populism. It may seem “odd” to some (but not to me!) that the same desperate disgruntled farmer in WI’s Driftless could vote for Bernie Sanders in a primary and then – once that option was no longer available – later choose a Donald Trump. When in doubt, vote the rascals, I often hear.

As Congress returns to DC from their holiday hiatus to face a new dumpster fire, here are a few more items on this farmer’s wishlist that could bridge the rural urban divide, restore trust in our wouldbe democracy, and perhaps even have populist traction – regardless of one’s party – before the midterms.

Fair Trade – Not Forced Trade. The U.S. does not feed the world and farmers don’t export – global trade profits largely go to corporate agribusiness. Last year we had a $45 billion agricultural trade deficit. And a lot of what we export other countries do not even want, but are forced to accept under trade regimes such as USCMC (aka NAFTA 2.0). Who really wants to eat meat or milk induced with hormones and full of antibiotic residues? What about wheat or oats harvested using toxic glyphosate? This type of dumping also happens to the U.S. Illegal melamine killed thousands of U.S. dogs thanks to tainted imported petfood. Untested milk protein concentrate (MPC) from who knows where (Belarus?) now displaces fresh U.S. milk to manufacture “cheese products.” The U.S. has had mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for clothes and electronics for decades, why not for food, too? Mystery menu items are not tolerated in 60+ other countries, and those of us in the U.S. deserve the same right to know. For more on trade policies that benefit farmers (and consumers), visit: IATP.

Anti-Trust – With Parity. Shortly after Obama was elected, farmers cornered USDA Sec. Vilsack at the La Crosse County Fair and demanded (successfully!) that joint USDA/DOJ hearings on anti-trust in the farm/food sector be held nationwide. They had high hopes – after all, it was populist anger against the robber barons that led to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890 and massive milk strikes led by the Farmers Holiday Association forced 1933 passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (the first Farm Bill). In June 2010 hundreds of farmers converged on UW-Madison to demand dairy anti-trust. Similar large crowds attended other hearings on seeds, poultry, retail, etc. But after all that effort – crickets… Commodity racketeering continues today unabated at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and it seems Washington DC doesn’t even have the anti-trust stomach to take on Big Tech. Reining in the food giants, though, would go a long way towards restoring farmer parity (and limiting price gouging of consumers). But, on the flip side of the coin, farmers would also need their own version of supply management – as farmers enjoy in many other countries. Just as workers deserve the right to collectively organize to determine their own wages, so should farmers when it comes to getting a fair price for their products. For more on this, visit Disparity to Parity.

Real Immigration Reform – Not More ICE with H2A. U.S. agriculture has always depended upon immigrants – my own ancestors fled an orchestrated famine in Ireland due to colonial oppression as indentured servants, but eventually became citizens (and farmers) themselves. The U.S. now has about 2.5 million farmworkers (40% of which are undocumented) – plus many more in slaughterhouses, processing plants, restaurants, retail groceries, etc. Everyone in WI knows full well that our famous dairy sector -with 16,000+ migrant workers (70% undocumented) would probably collapse if ICE seriously targeted our state with its gestapo style round-ups like those now underway in MN. These essential workers are not widgets easily replaced. We already have 30,000 prisoners compelled to do farm/food work often for no pay under the egregious loophole in the 13th amendment – and expanding the current H2A visa program for throwaway seasonal workers who have no real rights just goes further down this sordid maldevelopment path. A just farm/food system that doesn’t depend upon flagrant exploitation requires a pathway to citizenship, along with protections for ALL U.S. workers. To see more details, check out Anthony Pahnke’s article in the Fall 2025 Organic Broadcaster

Posted in Fair Trade, Farm Bill, Farm Worker Rights, Uncategorized | Comments Off on One Farmer’s New Year Resolutions for Our Troubled Times

Constructing Food Sovereignty – Report-back from the 8th CLOC Congress

Posted on January 30, 2026 by Samson Srok

The morning haze cannot fully conceal the power of the sun in balmy Morelos. Hundreds of us stand, our numbers growing as more trickle in to witness that morning’s mystica. Mexica dancers move to a reverberating drum beat, the seedpods on their ankles rattling in rhythm. I feel the vibrations in my chest. The dancers move in a circular pattern around an offering of fruits, vegetables, campesino working tools like the machete, a shovel; flowers and medicinal herbs surround a lit bowl of copal. Extending from this altar in a radial pattern like petals are overlapping flags representing our many countries and organizations. Welcome to all of us willing to do the work, welcome to our ancestors who have brought us to where we are, welcome to the future generations who will take up where we leave off.

This December 1st – 10th marked the 8th Congress of CLOC (Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo) – LVC (La Via Campesina). I had the honor to be one of the seven delegates from North America to attend the conference, and know it as my responsibility to share my experience.

For some background, the CLOC is an organization made up of member organizations across  Latin America, which represents small-scale farmers, campesinos (translated to English as “peasants”), indigenous folks and community members who live in rural territories. You can learn more at https://cloc-viacampesina.net/ (in Spanish). For more information on La Via Campesina, you can visit https://viacampesina.org/en/ (in English)

My name is Samson Srok, I’m a farmworker and a farm manager apprentice for a diversified veggie farm in Madison, Wisconsin. I see agriculture as an inherently political act and food sovereignty as the liberation tool. I was first exposed to LVC through FFD almost a decade ago and have been involved for two years. I learned my Spanish living in rural Ecuador for about nine months over a decade ago, living with campesinos.

I came to the Congress with open ears and an eager energy – ready to listen, bring back inspiration, to boster our struggles by learning from our comrades’ successes. To be quite frank, what a part of me was really craving were answers. Clear next steps. There must be some PowerPoint slides which detail, “this is what you do.” Unfortunately, this specific presentation was not held at the congress this year, or if it was I apologize as I must have slipped out for that portion.

When I am working in the field on a hot summer day, as well as when I’m in a room trying to make communal decisions with other passionate folks, I am reminded: doing the real work is hard, but with commitment and good strategy, it is possible.

First, to highlight the structure of the gathering itself. To bring together many individuals all active in their own territories to connect to one another and contemplate the global structural pieces which bind us is profound. Logistically, it’s also very cumbersome, and lacks a standard methodology to follow. Internationalism or true multiculturalism in a non-capitalist/non-imperialist context is uncharted waters for all of us.

A movement which has the power to transform oppressive systems must center the voices of those most oppressed. These are the identities to be placed in leadership roles. To build such a strong foundation is also the most difficult, those most marginalized are systematically disempowered, face the strongest tangible barriers to being in activism, and will be subject to criticism from both their oppressors as well as allies that haven’t unlearned sexist, racist, colonialist views. Creating a radical movement led by campesinos requires a slow pace. The drum beat of progress must allow us all to tune in to each other, and there’s a lot of us.

I was one of many individuals actively in formación, a Spanish word meaning training or formation, learning hands-on by making connections, asking questions and sharing context. The identities of those present spanned generations. Some grew up in rural communities, others in cities, from Patagonia up to Canada. How do so many different people begin to organize themselves to discuss systematic change together?

At the gathering, the structures elected to organize ourselves were primarily identity-based assemblies and issue-specific roundtables. The first four days of the gathering were these assemblies – the Assembly of Diversities (referring to gender and sexuality), the Assembly of Young People, and the Assembly of Women (two days).

Prioritizing these identities in the construction of a food sovereignty movement, ideally, roots feminism as a core foundation to the work and offers strong invitations to young people and queer people to join the movement.

An essential question that was asked loudly and visibly during the congress was why aren’t there assemblies for other oppressed identities whose perspectives are foundational to the movement – specifically for afro-descendent populations and indigenous people.  If we recognize the utility of making intentional spaces for specific identities, why would this stop at just women, youth, and gender & sexuality diversity? More assemblies also mean more logistics to navigate and more work for regional coordinators – although what knowledge might we lose, what folks will we not draw in if we are not intentional about inviting them? I believe the CLOC’s further exploration of the question of additional assemblies will bring new insight into the purpose of these assemblies, and a deeper understanding of intersectionality in theory and practice.

This was the first ever assembly of diversities, thanks to many years of discussion, informal meetings, and petitioning of the CLOC leadership. As a queer and trans person myself, who was expecting to hear stories of intolerance and discrimination, I was still shocked to hear the violent transphobic and homophobic attacks that my kin experience in parts of Latin America still. Being attacked, killed, or forcibly displaced from my home for being queer are experiences I never expect to face in the United States, but this violence is still happening across our globe. It is radical for an organization which represents rural communities to uplift LGBTQIA+ voices. Similar to how feminist theory makes our entire movement stronger by having us question dominant structures, queer liberation theory can provide us similar tools.

The coalition who coordinated the diversities assemblies led with strong direction. Their declaration presented at the end of the gathering offered concrete action steps for bolstering the diversities collective, a strong beginning for what I hope will be an influential collective in the movement.

In the youth assembly, an overarching tone of our discussions was a pervasive sense of hopelessness felt in our communities.

At one point, a Haitian comrade sang a song about the feeling of futility in struggle,

this song coming from the same tradition of slave songs in the US south. The tone and repetition from the singer did not command us to shrivel in despair, but rather to experience catharsis. The melody providing a safe place to feel the depth of the pain and the space to process it into motivation for how we will fight against.

The night after the youth assembly, I had dinner with a Colombian comrade who had been displaced from her family’s land. Paramilitaries that had turned into armed gangs were violently changing the territory she had lived in for generations. But as this violence continued, the community didn’t just stand by to watch, instead forming local resistance. She spoke of how in the face of forced evictions, the whole community, hundreds of people, will come together to occupy the land and show a united front against their aggressors. This has allowed more community members to keep their land, and allowed all involved to feel some hope.

Over time in Colombia, many communities who understand their unity as their strength have banded together, creating el Congreso de los Pueblos, a national solidarity organization to protect land rights and provide a voice for neighbors that individually could not make a strong difference. In one region of the country, this organization sponsored a local legislator, who won the election and has been able to create and change laws to serve the people. This is systems change from grassroots organizations.

This perhaps is the other side of the hopelessness – the phenomenon that with more repression comes more resistance. Many stories I heard from delegates were tales of communities uniting and coalition offering ways forward to protect rights, gain ground, survive, and change tides. This is a crucial ethos we must cultivate in the United States in the face of rising fascism. Furthermore, the energy and imagination of young people is essential for such unity to rise up.

During the women’s assembly, a separate space was designated for the men to discuss masculinity in the context of a feminist movement. There is a connection between how feminism is presented in the mainstream with a disillusionment from men as they attempt to understand their role in a more equal world. I see us in an acute moment of needing to have more discussion with men to transform feelings of being pushed out and no longer useful into understanding that a world with more gender equality is liberating to every one of us.

As the four days of assemblies came to an end, we moved locations from Mexico City to Morelos and welcomed in hundreds more campesinos, small scale farmers, and citizens in the struggle for the four days of the congress. The topics that had caught my attention in the assemblies were further fleshed out in the congress, and the two I’d like to share on are migration and of the importance of growing political and class consciousness in our communities.

Migration was discussed at every day of the gathering, formally and informally. It is a direct consequence of the empire’s structure. Manufacturing global inequality to grow wealth in the Western World results in the reality that one is economically better off living in the Western world. The legacy of colonialism and US military and political invention to sabotage attempts at sovereignty has created the foundations for the corruption that plagues many of the Latin American countries present at the gathering, with campesinos and traditional ways of living being the most affected.

These things, I knew. However, to hear folks from across the continent speak on how this migration has personally touched them brought a new depth to my understanding. A man my age from the Dominican Republic shared that 70% of his peers have migrated from his community. To imagine even just seven of my ten closest friends seeing no option for their future other than to leave the United States, separate from family, and opt to enter a world of informal employment without legal status, put their life in danger with no assurance that they could someday return is harrowing.

The vast majority of the people I spoke with had stories of friends and children, especially, who had migrated. The reality of a separated family means missing the birth of children, the death of grandparents, being unable to celebrate or grieve together. An entire generation born outside of their homeland, wishing but unable to connect to their culture. An economic order which compels families to be torn apart is violent. And of course, the forced turn to individualism is exactly what the capitalist system wants.

The banking industry directly benefits from the money sent home in remittances, receiving a cut. Migration, a horror for the family and a draining of the future of rural communities, is a boon for the financial sector.

A newer layer to this issue is how the Trump administration employs the racist rhetoric to make migrants a scapegoat and distract from his ineffective governance. Vilifying the migrant population provides excuses to increase police and military presence in our communities to normalize their presence, increase their scope, insight fear, and discourage organizing. All these pieces serve to strengthen the rise of facism in our country.

I gained great insight into the phenomenon of migration as I learned how the many gears of the apparatus turn together to oppress communities at all levels. We need to popularize education about the systemic nature and scope of the violence of migration. International solidarity can empower US citizens to understand what is actually happening and encourages mobilization.

Growing political and class consciousness is a basis to stoke a mass movement. In Via, the Spanish word that synthesis this type of learning is called “formación” (translates as formation, training). The way that attending the congress enhanced my personal understanding of migration is an example of this. Hearing personal narratives and connecting these with the historical context and data I already knew motivates me in my activism. Formación is critical for our movement – learning how the mechanisms of the system works is the first step to changing those mechanisms.

The importance of formación and the struggles to facilitate it were repeated throughout the gathering. The difficulty of having individuals travel for a workshop, or lack of funds and resources to bring teachers to the community, the habit of having the same people attend the same events, a lack of strategy for outreach, the lack of experts in our communities to teach what we need to learn. Capitalism creates additional barriers that make attending popular education more difficult – you can’t join a weeknight class to learn about abolition if you have to work 50 hours a week just to make rent and feed your kids.

I hope to be involved with the committee for formación in the North American region of LVC. If you feel passionate about this, especially if you have experience to share and a want to help us form effective methodology, I implore you to join our region. While the result is communal, the effort comes from each individual willing to give their time and energy.

There is much more I have to share about what I learned at this gathering. I’ve only written about two of the seven issues selected for roundtable discussions during the conference, and there’s other connections and conversations I had outside of the formal gathering that were impactful to me. I will continue to write about these reflections as the year goes along. Make sure to sign up for our e-newsletter (link on our website) and follow our Facebook page if you’re interested in hearing more.

With this, I strongly encourage more individuals to join us. The North American region of La Via Campesina is still in the beginning stages of reconstruction, and our journey toward liberation, solidarity, and food sovereignty needs your talents. There are coming opportunities for farmer exchanges, learning in other parts of the world, and joining our official delegation. The best ways to get involved are to email familyfarmdefenders@yahoo.com to join our monthly international solidarity calls. You can also contact me personally at samsrok@gmail.com if you want to learn more.

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Big Data is a Bad Idea! Why AI Factory Farms Will Not Save Rural America

Posted on January 9, 2026 by admin

By: John E. Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders

Published by Common Dreams, Jan. 12, 2026

One word – plastics. That was the golden grail that Dustin Hoffman learned about from some well wisher in the movie the Graduate. I remember watching the film as a farm kid and thinking about the updated version I was being told by my guidance counselors – one word: computers. We are now in the midst of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and the latest mantra is: artificial intelligence (AI). Such free advice, though, could really be a costly warning in disguise.

Granted, there is a lot of poverty in the “richest” nation on earth, and marginalized U.S. communities often have few choices for economic (mal) development. It becomes a twisted game of pick your own poison: supermax prison, toxic waste dump, ethanol facility, tar sands pipeline… Now, AI data centers have been added to the limited menu. Someone recently shared a map of looming AI data centers across the world: https://www.datacentermap.com/ It reminded me of how a tumor spreads and Edward Abbey’s quote that “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

The fact that Big Data has targeted Rural America for its latest mastitis should be no surprise. We have lots of available land to grab, thanks to the legacy of settler colonialism and family farm foreclosure. Back in Aug. I remember driving past Beaver Dam and watching bulldozers flattening over 800 acres along Hwy 151 and my first hunch was: datacenter. Sure enough, the secretive $1 billion deal with Meta was finally revealed in a Nov. press release. Just north of Madison in the town of DeForest, Blackstone subsidiary, QTS Realty Trust, is aiming to build another $12 billion data center on close to 1600 acres. And if we need to free up more land for AI, we quaint rural folks could just abandon growing real Xmas trees and force people to buy plastic ones instead, as one Fox News “expert” suggested over the holidays. Pres. Biden visited Mt. Pleasant, WI in May 2024 to promote Microsoft’s new $3.3 billion 300+ acre AI campus on the former site of flat screen maker, Foxconn, that welcomed Pres. Trump for its groundbreaking back in 2018. Foxconn abandoned that $10 billion project and its 13,000 job promise, after getting millions in state subsidies and local tax deferrals.

The Microsoft AI complex in Mt. Pleasant will also require over 8 million gallons of water per year from Lake Michigan. We still have some clean water, though that may not last long thanks to agrochemical monocultures, CAFO manure dumping, and PFAS-laden sludge spreading. And AI certainly is thirsty – the Alliance for the Great Lakes noted in its Aug. 2025 report that a hyperscale AI datacenter needs up to 365 million gallons of water to keep itself cool – that is as much water as is needed by 12,000 people! A recent investigative report by Bloomberg News found that over two thirds of the AI data centers built since 2022 are in parts of the country already facing water stress. And it is really hard to drink data.

In the Midwest we also have potential access to vast electricity (fracked natural gas, wind and solar farms, methane digesters), and relatively under stressed high voltage grids (unlike CA or TX) though the loss of “cheaper” imported Canadian hydropower with the latest trade war could be a serious challenge. In 2023 the U.S. had over a $2 billion electricity trade deficit vis-a-vis Canada. According to a recent Clean Wisconsin report, just two of our proposed AI datacenters will require 3.9 gigawatts – 1.5 times the current power demand of all 4.3 million homes in the state. But, no worry, there are dilapidated U.S. nuclear reactors with massive waste dumps that could be put back online such as Palisades in MI, despite opposition from environmental activists and family farmers. The Trump administration also just announced a $1 billion low interest loan to reanimate Three Mile Island in PA for the sake of AI. Until all that happens, though, regular rate payers can expect a huge hike in their energy bills as Big Data has the market clout to siphon off what it needs first, especially as it colludes with utility monopolies. Many people in WI are already paying for $1+ billion in stranded assets – mostly defunct coal plants, as well as nuclear waste storage facilities – while utility investors continue to receive guaranteed dividends of 9 – 10%.

But is all the AI hype just another bubble about to burst? Rural communities (and public taxpayers) have been offered many “amazing” schemes in the past that ended up being just a “bait and switch” – another hollow promise. If we subsidize a massive data center, will the projected “market” for increasing algorithms actually come? Many within the AI industry don’t think so, and are now invoking the lessons we should have learned from the Enron scandal decades ago or the even worse sequel in the subprime mortgage fueled financial meltdown. Corporate cheerleaders can be quite clever when it comes to inflating prices (and stocks) for goods and services that may not even exist, while hiding their massive debt obligations in a whole cascading series of shadowy shell subsidiaries and dishonest accounting shenanigans.

Many industry insiders are ringing alarm bells. “These models are being hyped up, and we’re investing more than we should,” said Daron Acemoglu, who won the 2024 Nobel Economics Prize, quoted in a recent 11/23/25 NPR story about the current AI boom/bubble. OpenAI says it will spend $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next eight years, while Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are going to throw in another $400 billion. Meanwhile, just 3% of people who use AI now pay for it, and many are frantically trying to figure out how to turn off AI mode on their internet searches and to reject AI eavesdropping on their Zoom calls. Where is the real revenue going to come from to pay for all this AI speculation? The same NPR story notes that such a flood of leveraged capital is equal to every iPhone user on earth forking over $250 to “enjoy” the benefits of AI – and “that’s not going to happen,” adds Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist who is now a research fellow at MIT’s Institute for the Digital Economy. Morgan Stanley estimates AI companies will shell out $3 trillion by 2028 for this data center buildout – but less than 50% of that money will come from them. Hmmm…

Special purpose vehicle (SPV) may sound like a fancy name for a retrofitted tractor – but that is how Big Data is creating a Potemkin Village to hide their Ponzi Scheme. Here is one example from Richland Parish, Louisiana where Meta is now building its Hyperion Data Center – a massive $27 billion project. A Wall Street outfit, Blue Owl, borrows $27 billion, using Meta’s future rent payments for a data center to back up its loan. Meta’s 20% “mortgage” on the facility gives them 100% control of the purported data crunching from the facility. This debt never shows up on Meta’s books and remains hidden from carefree investors and shallow analysts – but like other synthetic financial instruments such as the now infamous mortgage backed security (MBS), the reality only comes home to roost when the house of cards collapses and Meta has to eventually payoff Blue Owl.

In the meantime as the LA Illuminator reports the residents of Richland Parish (where 25% live below the poverty level) are bearing the brunt of all the real costs of having an AI factory farm. Dozens of crashes involving construction vehicles, damage to local roads, massive future energy demands (three times that required for the entire city of New Orleans) which will entail new natural gas power plants to be built (subsidized by existing rate payers even as fossil fuel induced climate change floods the Louisiana delta). Beyond the initial building flurry, AI data centers are ultimately job poor. It just doesn’t take that many people to tend computers once they are built. As Meta’s VP, Brad Smith, admitted, the 250,000 sq ft. Hyperion data center may need 1500 workers to build but barely 50 to operate. Beyond all the ballyhoo, the main reason a particular community is chosen to “host” one seems to be based upon the bought duplicity of elected officials and the excessive generosity of local taxpayers. Not a good cost/benefit analysis – unless you are Big Data.

And then there are the questionable kickback schemes between the suppliers of the technology and those owning the data centers. If you are maker of computer chips, would you not be tempted to fork over capital to a major buyer of your own products to ensure future demand? Nvidia just announced a $100 billion stake in OpenAI to help bankroll the data centers. In turn OpenAI signed a $300 billion deal with Oracle to actually build the AI data centers that will require Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs). Open AI also signed a separate $6+ billion deal with former BitCoin miner, CoreWeave, which rents out internet cloud access (using Nvidia’s chips once again). This type of incestuous circular financing should raise eyebrows to anyone who studies business ethics – and perhaps remind others of how a toilet operates.

What is all this AI doing? Promoters will point to many innovations – faster screening for cancer cells, closer connection to far flung relatives, precision application of fertilizers and pesticides, elimination of drudgery in the workplace through automation. A bright future indeed – or perhaps not?

In Aug. 2025 ProPublica reported that the FDA had lost 20% of its staff devoted to food safety thanks to DOGE cuts. Inspection of food import facilities is now at historic low even as our dependence on the rest of the world to feed us grows. But not to worry, the FDA announced in May that AI was coming to the rescue thanks to a large language model (LLM) – dubbed Elsa – that would be deployed alongside what’s left of its human staff to expedite their oversight work. Hopefully, Elsa knows melamine when it sees it. AI Chatbots are also growing in popularity and available 24/7 to “talk/advise” people on all sorts of pressing issues – how to win more friends, how to cheat on this exam, how to make-up fake legal opinions, even encouraging a teenager to commit suicide and suggesting to someone else that they murder their own parents.

But there is an even dirtier AI underbelly. Some have dubbed these AI slop, AI smut, and AI stazi – three 21st century horsemen of the digital apocalypse. What is this all about? Well, a lot of these accelerating AI algorithms are actually devoted to selling “products” that many people do not want and would find objectionable, as well as providing “services” that undermine our basic freedoms. Slop (Merriam Webster’s word of 2025) is used to describe when AI generates internet content that is only meant to make money through advertising. Right now there are thousands of wannabe internet “creatives” all over the globe, watching “how to videos” to manufacture AI social media to grab the eyeballs of U.S. consumers. That cute puppy video you see on Instagram or that shocking “news” story you read on Facebook is not by accident – the goal is to monetize clicks per thousand (cost per mille – CPM) where advertisers pay for how much their ad is viewed online. This is also why online content is often overly long (where is the actual recipe in this cooking blog?) since that increases ad scrolling. The average U.S. consumer is now subject to between 6,000 and 10,000 ads per day – 70% of which are online. For more on AI slop, visit: https://www.visibrain.com/blog/ai-slop-social-media

An even worse virtual commodity is AI smut – literally algorithms creating pornography. This perverted version of AI scraps the internet for images (high school yearbooks, red carpet fashion shows, popular music concerts, street cam footage, etc.) and then uses “face swap” programs to create personalized hardcore rubbish. There is little if any accountability for this theft of public images and violation of personal privacy – at best those involved are “shamed” into taking down their AI sites after being exposed due to fears of liability and prosecution for child abuse. But that has hardly stopped this seedy AI subsector. Can you imagine your face/image being put into such a lucrative sexploitative scenario without your permission? At this point, there are hardly any internet police walking the beat in the virtual AI world. We don’t even have the right to be forgotten on the internet.

Which brings us to AI stazi – the updated version of the Cold War era East German secret police. UW-Madison just announced the creation of a College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence (CAI), in part thanks to a $140 million donation from Cisco. Few Bucky Badger fans know that 30 years ago they were used as guinea pigs while cheering at Camp Randall Stadium to help create facial recognition technology through a UW-Madison grant from the Dept of Defense Applied Research Agency (DARPA). Visitors to the UW campus today will no doubt “enjoy” the automated license plate readers (ALRPs) owned by Flock Safety. According to an Aug. 2025 Wisconsin Examiner expose, there are hundreds of Flock cameras across the state in use by law enforcements agencies, including WI County Sheriff Departments with active 287(g) cooperation agreements with ICE. No warrant is needed for law enforcement agencies to browse the national Flock database. In fact, agents have used Flock to track peaceful protesters, spy on spouses, and/or just stalk people they don’t like. To see where Flock cameras are near you, visit: www.deflock.me Of course, Flock Security has outsourced its AI programming to cheaper (and more secure?) Filipino contractors. Similar AI spying networks such as Pegasus have been widely exposed and have become “bread and butter” for authoritarian regimes from Israel to Saudi Arabia. China and Russia have their own versions (Skynet, SORM, etc.). Thanks to the cozy relationship between Pres. Trump and Peter Thiel, the U.S.-based AI mercenary outfit, Palantir, is now being re-deployed for domestic surveillance – first revealed by Edward Snowden back in 2017.

The latest executive bluster from Pres. Trump is that states’ rights are out the window when it comes to regulating AI data center – such federal preemption of local democratic control is part of the larger neoliberal “race to the bottom” forced trade agenda. But the cat is already out of the bag as dozens of communities have successfully blocked AI datacenter projects and others are poised to do the same based upon their winning strategies. Better yet, this is a bipartisan grassroots organizing issue!

What is the best way to keep out an AI factory farm? No non disclosure agreements (NDAs)! These are massive development schemes that could not exist without the approval and support of elected officials, so any agreement should not be secret. They can hardly claim to be providing a public good if they are not subject to transparency and oversight. No sweetheart deals! Big Data is among the wealthiest sectors of our current economy and does not need or deserve subsidies, discounted electric rates, tax increment financing, property tax holidays, or other incentives. It is a classic move of crony capitalism to privatize the benefits and socialize the costs. No regulatory loopholes! Given their huge demands for land, water, and energy, Big Data should not be allowed to cut legal corners and needs to follow all the rules of any other normal enterprise – full liability coverage, no special economic zones, consideration of cumulative impacts, protections for ratepayers, no unregulated toxic pollution or illegal water transfer in violation of the Clean Water Act or the Great Lakes Compact, etc. How much water your data center demands is hardly a “trade secret”…

And most important, don’t let Big Data boosters belittle your legitimate concerns as “neo-luddite!” Everyone uses technology – even the Amish. The real issue is whether or not AI data centers are economically viable, socially appropriate, environmentally sustainable, and actually serve the public interest. People have good reasons to be wary and oppose them on all those fronts.

For more info, checkout: Big Tech Unchecked: A Toolkit for Community Action

As well as the North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit

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