At first glance, there’s not a lot of promise for farm system advocates with the incoming Trump administration.

Take, for instance, Trump’s pick to serve as Agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins. The section dedicated to agriculture on the web page of the America First Policy Institute, where Rollins served as CEO, has almost nothing on food or farming. In fact, the little that does appear there deals with energy policy, making it seem that U.S. agriculture should be more about oil exploration than growing food.

And if Trump's first term is any sign of what's to come, then we can expect a series of taxpayer-subsidized payments to offset losses that will be incurred during trade war 2.0.

Meanwhile, from 2012 to 2022, the U.S. lost over 200,000 farms — about 10 percent of the country’s total. The only operations that increased in number during that time were megafarms that raked in more than $1 million a year in revenue, going from 81,660 in 2012, to 107,952 in 2022. Small and medium farms were decimated. With our food system becoming more and more dependent on imports, large-scale factory style operations and global suppliers make up our increasingly industrialized food system.

Such developments make Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking the helm at the Department of Health and Human Services that much more important. For all the hubbub surrounding his stances on vaccines or fluoride in water, his condemnation of pesticides and........

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