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"I come from one of the most rural and beautiful states in the US I will not rule out rural America," said the Vermont senator to an enthusiastic crowd in Osage , in Iowa.
"Maybe I am a bit radical here, but I think that a farmer who produces the food we eat is perhaps almost as important as a Wall Street scammer who destroys the loonie. economy, "he added.
In his remarks, Sanders lamented the fact that many small farmers are often at the mercy of a single buyer or supplier setting his prices.
"Agro-food conglomerates extract as much wealth as possible from small communities while family farmers go bankrupt and are treated in many ways as modern contract servants," he said.
Sanders promised "an immediate moratorium on agribusiness mergers" when he was to be elected and an attorney general willing to "dismantle large agribusiness companies".
It has committed to removing antitrust protections for family farmers from "intermediaries" and seed companies, as well as new laws protecting small farmers from "predatory patent prosecution" and allowing them to prosecute companies that contaminate neighboring farms with genetically modified crops.
With respect to pollution emissions, Sanders said it would require industrial operations to respond to this pollution by strictly enforcing the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
He also criticized the agricultural lobbyists, promising to fight their efforts by channeling subsidies from the Department of Agriculture to a handful of powerful farmers or landowners.
"We will limit subsidies from Washington and ensure that they are targeted at farmers who need this aid, not at these profitable agro-industrial companies," he said.
Sanders also focused on the links between agriculture and other policy areas such as national security, climate change and immigration.
He warned against foreign companies and countries buying American farmland as a threat to national security, promising to regulate this practice and placing the Secretary of Agriculture "in the security sign national regulating foreign investment in the United States ".
He also advocated for legislation to help farmers move to "independent family regeneration practices" to promote carbon absorption in soils and provide assistance to flood-affected farmers and farmers. natural disasters.
On the subject of immigration, Sanders called for a path to citizenship and increased visa numbers for undocumented farm workers, as well as at the end of the raids on the 39, immigration in the workplace.
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