~~ recommended by emil karpo ~
The bill supports multinational corporations and not independent farmers like me
Iowa is known for its agricultural production, often proudly boasting that it is home to more pigs than people. As a young and beginning independent Iowa farmer trying to make a living raising pigs and poultry on pasture, I am acutely aware of the scale and impact of Iowa’s corporate agriculture industry.
Policies that further entrench industrial agriculture matter so much to farmers like me. So it’s disappointing to see Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa-02) once again championing the Save Our Bacon Act, legislation she introduced in 2025. The bill was successfully included in the version of the farm bill passed by the U.S. House on April 30. However, it was not included in the Senate’s draft of the bill, whose latest version was recently released ahead of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s markup on Thursday.
On July 10, Hinson stood on a farm outside Marshalltown, Iowa, urging Senators to include the legislation in its version of the farm bill, arguing it protects small Iowa farmers. It may protect the status quo, but it doesn’t protect the kind of localized regional food systems many of us are fighting to rebuild—the same ones many Iowans believe are essential to address our growing water quality and cancer crisis. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is expected to follow Hinson’s lead by adding the Save Our Bacon Act to the farm bill as part of the committee markup.
The Save Our Bacon Act would block states and localities from setting standards for the sale of livestock products produced in other states. It would nullify laws like California’s Proposition 12, which set new standards banning the sale of meat, eggs and poultry bred in tightly confined spaces, with its consequences extending to food safety standards and consumer protection laws.
Hinson and the bill’s supporters have repeatedly claimed that the bill will help save family farmers from costs associated with transitioning their practices to meet minimum space standards for raising livestock, fearing those costs could put them out of business. And while it’s true that this conversion comes with an initial upfront investment, farmers around the country have reported production benefits afterward, as they receive a price premium that makes their business viable and access to a market not dominated by corporate control. About 27% of producers are already Prop. 12 compliant and have invested hundreds of millions of dollars through renovations and construction. Should the law be rolled back, 90% of those investments would be “stranded” according to a new economic analysis commissioned by the American Meat Producers Association, destabilizing many operations.
It’s clear the biggest winners from the Save Our Bacon Act won’t be independent Iowa farmers. They’ll be multinational corporations and large integrators that already dominate the country’s pork industry.
Independent farmers like me exist in a parallel supply chain to the industrial system. In the corporate system, a company owns the pigs, feed and medicine, while the farmer becomes a contract grower who is paid a set price to provide the buildings, utilities, investment capital, and the labor to raise the pigs. Under this contract, the company (called “integrator,” often set up as an LLC to obscure their ownership and relationship to multinational meatpacking conglomerates) dictates how to raise the pigs, and when and where to sell them for slaughter. The company usually organizes the farm into a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), housing thousands of hogs, only to ship out the profits and leave farmers and rural communities with the risks.
By contrast, my own business, Over the Moon Farm, owns the hogs and control over the entirety of the process from birth through slaughter. Ultimately, we take responsibility for feeding our community in Eastern Iowa. When independent farmers like me exist, the dollars we spend circulate locally. For us, that means buying feed from a small independent feed mill in a neighboring town that delivers our freshly ground hog feed every week. That feed mill employs local people. They bank locally and they maintain one of the few remaining storefronts in their community.
Our massively consolidated hog system makes it systematically harder to raise 100 pigs than 4,000. The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) admits that, over the past two decades, the number of hog farms has decreased by roughly 50% while hog production has increased by 20 million. The contract growing system is a major factor. I watch every day as this consolidation hollows out our rural communities, large pork integrators keep getting bigger, and independent agricultural markets and supply chain infrastructure disappear. Our pig population may keep growing, but independent farmers like me have become few and far between, struggling to survive in a state and country that caters to industrial scale systems.
Unfortunately, Hinson relies more on the idea of the struggling family farmer than the reality of pork production in Iowa. Most pigs are raised under contract for huge, multi-billion-dollar companies that could cover their farmers’ costs to transition to more humane systems and simply choose not to. Hinson’s support of the Save Our Bacon Act directly enables these companies to continue stacking all of the risks and costs of production onto Iowa farmers while they rake in the profits, further concentrating their power and hurting all Iowans in the process.
Iowa voters are catching on. On July 20, Farm Action Fund, a nonpartisan, farmer-led organization, found in a poll that 45% of Iowans oppose the Save Our Bacon Act, while 23% support it. According to the poll, opposition spanned every congressional district, age group, party affiliation and gender. It also found Hinson’s support for the bill could create a political liability, with Hinson having received campaign contributions from Smithfield, a Chinese-owned multinational meatpacking conglomerate. Politicians like her should pay attention.
Over the past seven years since starting Over the Moon Farm, I’ve worked to create a transformative business that moves Iowa toward a food and farming system that feeds our communities, values the dignity of people and animals, and supports the economic revitalization our rural and urban communities need. Every new relationship with a butcher, grocery store, or family buying directly from the farm strengthens our local economy, and gives young farmers like myself a reason to stay on or return to the farm.
Over the Moon is one of thousands of independent, pasture-based livestock farms around the country doing this work in the face of extreme corporate consolidation. Yet, despite the value we provide to our immediate communities, we are often overlooked by politicians like Hinson and the industrial trade associations, like the NPPC, that donate to their campaigns.
It is because of this neglect that we are proud to be founding members of the FACE (Farmers for Animals, Communities, and the Environment) Ag Network—the first national network designed to give pasture-based livestock farmers the tools, platform, and collective power necessary to combat the industrial dominance of our livestock systems, and achieve meaningful progress towards a more humane, resilient, and regional food future.
Young and beginning farmers like me aren’t lacking skills or innovations, nor are we lacking demand for our products. We are lacking access to markets that give us opportunities. We need policies that restore competition, recognize the will of voters, get more local food into our communities, strengthen independent farms, and give the next generation a real chance to succeed.
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