A handful of companies control American agriculture. Cory Booker wants to change that

In the absence of true competition, says Fred Stokes, a cattle rancher and founding member of the Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM), a nonprofit focused on antitrust and trade policy in agriculture, “the prices that the farmer pays for the tractor and the fertilizer, or gets for the crops and cattle, is determined in the boardroom, not the dynamic marketplace.” Driven down, in other words. Interestingly, the bill excludes agricultural cooperatives, like the monopolistic Dairy Farmers of America, and manufacturers of farm machinery, such as John Deere, from its definition of input suppliers affected by the moratorium.

But what does a senator from New Jersey, which ranks 46th in the nation in livestock and poultry sales and 47th in cattle inventory, care about all that? It’s not as though ranchers represent one of Booker’s biggest constituencies. But it is true that he has long advocated for better food access: during his tenure as mayor of Newark, he notoriously lived on a food budget of $30 for a week—the amount allotted to New Jersey food stamps recipients. And Booker has also co-sponsored food waste acts in successive Congresses, and legislation to ban fast-food employers from “no-poach rules.”

Booker also has a keen interest not just in eaters, but in producers and growers—particularly when it comes to cattle production, the largest sector of American agriculture. In 2016, he introduced legislation to “increase transparency and accountability” in checkoffs, which are government-mandated marketing programs financed by fees paid by producers. (We’ve written extensively about the bitter debate checkoffs prompted in the organic industry.)

That Booker would introduce such a bill when New Jersey boasts a relatively modest farm sector is a sure sign that an ag-whisperer had his ear. Joe Maxwell, Missouri’s former lieutenant governor, a fourth-generation pig farmer, and the executive director of OCM, says he began talking to Booker about beef checkoff corruption in 2015.

“He knew a lot about agriculture, especially as it relates to New Jersey,” Maxwell recalls, noting that the state does produce a fair amount of vegetables, ranking 17th in the country. “We had been finding fewer and fewer members of the House or Senate from major agriculture states that weren’t already in bed with industrial agriculture—you know, the globalization, and increased concentration—or didn’t want to push against them.”

Maxwell recalls that Booker’s stances on corporate power, and his line of questioning in hearings, made him seem like a natural advocate for ranchers. (He couldn’t name particular hearings or legislation when asked for specifics. Booker’s office did not respond to requests for comment by press time.)

“He was one of those folks who believed there was too much power on one side of the deal,” Maxwell says. “If I can make that case on behalf of America’s family farms and ranchers, he was already there. He was just, he hadn’t been exposed to it in that light.”

As far as ranching issues go, Maxwell says checkoff corruption “was a great issue to bring to him, because it’s also a good-government issue.” And, “the farmers are being mandated to pay this assessment, and it’s being used in a counter purpose for which it is collected.” Maxwell says Booker was a quick study (“he’s like a sponge”) and that he had followed up by sending the senator readings from Mary Hendrickson, the University of Missouri rural sociologist, and more recently, arranging visits with farmers and ranchers in Illinois and Kansas.

Maxwell has brought other issues to Booker’s attention, too. Earlier this year, the senator took aim at the chicken industry by introducing an amendment to the Small Business Lending Oversight Reform Act that challenged what some say is a rigged relationship between integrators—entities like Tyson Foods that contract with farmers to raise chickens or hogs to slaughter size and weight—and contract growers, known as affiliates. At issue was the $1.7 billion in small-business loans granted to growers who farm for integrators, which Booker and others said meant they couldn’t be considered small businesses.

Other than the $60-billion Bayer-Monsanto merger, which has already been approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the bill’s supporters—or at least the ones I talked to—don’t see any other imminent mergers on the horizon that this proposed legislation could avert. The release of the bill now, in this Senate, Maxwell says, is strategic to capture the attention of elected officials leading up to their re-elections.

“It gives us a chance to walk the halls,” he says. “They pay a lot of attention during election years.”

Allies who support the moratorium could include Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has called agriculture consolidation a “tsunami,” and Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who has questioned claims from seed giants that mergers increase production efficiency.