Friends of the Earth Action applauds Warren’s bold agriculture plan
WASHINGTON – Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren released a plan today to help revitalize the food and agriculture sector to fight climate change.
In response, Tiffany Finck-Haynes, pesticides and pollinators program manager at Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement:
Friends of the Earth Action applauds Sen. Warren for recognizing that we must fundamentally transform our food and agriculture system to stabilize our climate and ensure food security. Senator Warren is correct that Big Ag is destroying our agriculture system, and that we must break up their corporate monopolies, hold them responsible for their environmental abuse, and give their giant subsidies to independent famers. Her plan also recognizes that we need to grow local and regional food economies, stop forcing farmers to overproduce and that we must ensure farmers are paid fair wages.
We are pleased to see Sen. Warren address historic policies and discrimination that have impacted farmers of color and other disadvantaged farmers. The only way to remedy this situation is to ensure equitable access to credit and land for new and diverse farmers. However, Sen. Warren’s call to decarbonize agriculture by 2030 is concerning because it could allow for the use of offsets, which would allow existing large greenhouse gas emitters to continue polluting. We urge Sen. Warren to commit to supporting farmers in carbon reduction, sequestration and climate resilience via a rapid, just transition to ecologically regenerative, organic and agroecological practices. We also call on Sen. Warren to ensure her plan would guarantee fair, family-sustaining living wages and safe, humane working conditions for all workers in the food and agriculture industry including farmworkers, fishers, and others.
Friends of the Earth released an opinion piece prior to Sen. Warren’s agriculture plan release. The piece compares where some of the top 2020 candidates land on key food and agriculture issues.
Communications contact: Erin Jensen, (202) 222-0722, ejensen@foe.org