Family Farm Defenders

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 13^th 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

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

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 21^st 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

Kickoff Event – Wisconsin Premiere Screening of the new Price of Milk film

Fri. Nov. 14th 5:30 – 8:00 pm UW-Madison’s Ag Hall, Rm 125 (1450 Linden Dr.) 

Followup Panelists include: Pete Hardin, editor of The Milkweed; Sarah Lloyd, former dairy farmer and National Dairy Board member and Supply Chain Specialist for UW Grassland 2.0; Dominique Brossard, Professor, Life Sciences Communication, UW Madison; and Sara Fletcher, Vice President Corporate Affairs, Oatly North America. Moderator: Jim Goodman, retired organic dairy farmer, Board Chair National Family Farm Coalition  Plus, post-film refreshments!

Sponsored by the UW-Madison Agroecology Program with support from Family Farm Defenders, Oatly, and Sub-Genre Media

Sat. Nov. 15th 8:00 am – 4:00 pm Best Western Plus Inntowner (2424 Univ. Ave.) FFD board retreat, including the FFD Annual Meeting starting at 12:00 noon CST 

FFD annual meeting will include officer reports, board elections, and discussion of past and future activities. Lunch provided – all members and allies welcome!

For those who would like to join us virtually for the FFD Annual Meeting, here is the Zoom link Meeting ID: 865 4279 0584
Passcode: 460890

Sat. Nov. 15th 5:30 – 8:30 pm John Kinsman Food Sovereignty Prize Award Banquet and Ceremony

UW-Madison, Pyle Center (702 Langdon St.) 

Closest parking is at State St. Campus Garage (430 N. Frances St.)

https://www.cityofmadison.com/parking/garages-lots/state-street-campus-garage

For those who would like to join us virtually, here is the Zoom link
Meeting ID: 879 7321 2436
Passcode: 686415

This year’s winners include: Sarah Leong and Patrick Hager (Squashington Farm – Mt. Horeb, WI); Hannah Scates Kettler and Kurtis Kettler (Minerva’s Meadows – State Center, IA) and Jess D’Souza (Wonderfarm – Mt. Horeb, WI)!

$35 suggested donation includes a buffet featuring WI local and native food. Advance payment preferred (online donation welcome!) RSVP requested – but no one will be turned away!

Keynote speaker:

Christine Neumann-Ortiz

Founding executive director of Voces de la Frontera

Those planning to attend from outside of Madison are encouraged to book rooms at the Best Western Plus Inntowner under the name of Family Farm Defenders for a discounted rate:  tel. 608-233-8778