Washington – A Democratic congressman and chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson, is undecided about making another run for re-election from his Minnesota district.
He thinks he could win but does not look forward to leading a legislative effort on another farm bill. He says it is getting harder every time to pass one.
I'm surely not alone in hoping Collin Peterson will retire. The farm bills he has guided to passage have been woefully short of meeting rural America's needs. They have been long on special interest protections and short on conservation, nutrition, crop insurance reforms, and developing agricultural markets.
Step back from the minutia of farm bills and look at the big picture: much of rural America is depopulating; much of it is suffering from obesity and diabetes epidemics; topsoil is eroding at an alarming rate; grocery stores of any kind (let alone those offering healthy food) are ironically disappearing from America's breadbasket regions; trade policy is a tariff-driven shambles.
Note these recent headlines and read their links:
How Washington keeps America sick and fat (Politico)
Farm Country Feeds America. But Just Try Buying Groceries There. (New York Times)
House Democrats Are Failing to Protect Farmers from Trump (Washington Monthly)
It may be unfair to blame Collin Peterson for all of this, but he's been a large part of the problem, as have his fellow Democrats who have written off rural America for their own misguided reasons. Peterson and the Democrats had a huge opportunity after the 2018 elections, when they took power in the House, to address these issues in 2019 rather than pass a 2018 lame-duck farm bill still shaped by the discredited theories of Earl ("Get big or get out") Butz, but they did not.
Please retire, Collin Peterson. Step aside for new leadership that is up to the job.
