Renowned Virginia farmer and author Joel Salatin told a Make America Healthy Again rally in Clive, Iowa, on October 28 that the answer to corporate dominance in America's food system is not more government, but more freedom. The self-described 'Lunatic Farmer' said Americans need the same passion for food freedom that they bring to gun rights.
Speaking days before Iowa's November 3 midterm elections, Salatin took direct aim at Sen. Bernie Sanders' favorite talking point, the menace of 'oligarchy,' and argued that Iowans and all Americans can break corporate control by reclaiming the right to produce, sell, and buy food from their neighbors.
Freedom is the cure, Salatin says
Salatin, who addressed the crowd alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn, said the country has already tried the big-government approach for a century and a half.
'We have the cure right now for Senator Bernie Sanders' oligarchy,' Salatin said, according to Breitbart's coverage of the rally. 'The answer is not government intervention. We've been trying that for 150 years, and look where it's gotten us.'
'The answer is freedom,' he continued, 'and when Americans are as concerned about food freedom as they are gun freedom, we're going to have a different country. And I'm not saying that to disparage guns. I'm a very happy gun owner, but we have an oligarchy.'
Salatin, who has spent decades promoting regenerative farming at his Polyface Farm, has warned that the economic pressures on family agriculture are intensifying. As he recently told Wealthion in an interview highlighted on Substack, farm bankruptcies doubled in 2025 from the year before, and USDA projections show corn farmers losing between $100 and $200 per acre this year.
One spigot, 25 brands
Citing his latest book, Food Emancipation, Salatin pointed to Tyson Foods' ownership of a long list of familiar brands, including Ball Park, Hillshire Farm, Jimmy Dean, Sara Lee, and State Fair.
'You ever wonder why, when there's a food recall, there's about 25 brands behind the food recall?' Salatin asked. 'Why? Because they'll come from the same spigot.'
His point landed with a crowd concerned about consolidation in the food industry. Salatin argued that Americans have abundant choices in nearly every part of life except the one that matters most at the dinner table.
'We have choice in the bathroom, choice in the bedroom, choice in the altar. We don't have choice in the kitchen,' he declared.
Why Salatin says government is the problem
Salatin ran through a list of federal food guidance that he said has damaged public health, from the push to replace butter with margarine and Crisco to the food pyramid that put processed cereals and snack cakes at its base.
'The government told us to sprinkle everything with DDT,' he said. 'The government told us to use chemicals like glyphosate. It paid for research that launched genetically modified organisms. It told us raw milk was horrible but cans of coconut was fine.' He added: 'Nothing the government chooses is good.'
That message carries obvious weight in Iowa, where agriculture remains the backbone of the state's economy and where farmers have watched consolidation squeeze independent producers for decades.
A generational land transfer unlike anything in history
Salatin warned that the country faces a moment of decision in the next 15 years, when half of all American agricultural equity, including land, buildings, and equipment, will change hands as the current generation of farmers retires.
'When a farmer can't make a living on a farm, when young people can't get in, old people can't get out, and we have a crisis of succession in the next 15 years, 50 percent of all America's agriculture equity, land, buildings, equipment, is going to change hands to another generation,' he said. 'Who's going to control that?'
He noted that 47 percent of all agricultural land in America is currently leased, meaning nearly half the country's farmland is managed by people who do not own it.
'No culture has ever gone through this agrarian equity transfer that fast in peace. It's only happened in conquest,' Salatin said. 'If we make this transition peacefully, we will be the first civilization in history to do so.'
Young farmers are ready, but regulations stand in the way
Salatin closed on an optimistic note, saying thousands of young people want to farm differently and sell real food to their neighbors, without dyes, artificial flavorings, or chemical-intensive practices.
'We've got thousands and thousands of young people ready to do something different besides pouring glyphosate down our rivers that are ready to embrace earthworms and actual authentic integrity food,' he said.
But he said government regulations are smothering those ambitions before they can start.
'They can't do it because their dreams of being able to access their neighbors with food is stuck and stigmatized with this plethora of government regulations that make their embryonic dreams too big to be perfect,' Salatin said.
Sanders defends his own travel habits
Salatin's remarks challenged the approach championed by Sanders, who has made his long career in the Senate a vehicle for anti-oligarchy messaging through his nationwide 'Fighting Oligarchy Tour.' The Vermont independent has repeatedly argued that corporate power threatens American democracy.
Sanders faced criticism himself in May, when Fox News host Bret Baier asked about reports that his campaign spent $221,000 on private jet travel during that tour.
'You think I'm going to be sitting on a waiting line at United waiting while 30,000 people are waiting?' Sanders responded. 'That's the only way you can get around. No apologies for that.'
Kennedy, who also spoke at the Clive rally, previously defended President Donald Trump's record on taking on entrenched interests.
'There has never been a president more willing to stand up to the oligarchs than President Donald Trump,' Kennedy said at a May 12 press conference, arguing that Congress has been 'controlled in so many ways by the pharmaceutical industry.'
The Clive rally, hosted by MAHA PAC, drew a slate of Republican candidates and health and agriculture advocates ahead of an election that will decide Iowa's next governor. For Salatin, the message to Iowa voters was simple: the cure for corporate control of food is not another federal program. It is getting Washington out of the way.