Rural advocacy groups have launched an initiative to raise awareness of rural issues and support producers who grow healthy food in Nebraska.

The effort is part of a broader strategy calling on voters to back candidates who advocates say have the interests of rural Nebraskans at heart.

High production costs and low commodity prices have put Nebraska farmers in a financial bind for years. In many cases, advocates say, they have lost ground to large operations, many of which are foreign-owned.

Image

Joe Maxwell, president of Farm Action Fund, said large-scale farms are not a major food source for most Americans, even if they claim to be.

“The very largest farms in this country don’t raise food. They raise feed crops and fuel crops,” Maxwell said. “The large farms in this country are not feeding America. We like to claim in American agriculture that we ‘feed the world.’ We don’t feed the world. We don’t even feed ourselves.”

Maxwell said small family and independent farmers in Nebraska are being pushed out by corporate operations that export the majority of what they grow.

“Rural America doesn’t want special treatment,” Maxwell said. “It wants fairness.”

Maxwell also criticized the current administration’s choice to import more beef at a time when he said Nebraska cattle producers are finally gaining some economic ground.

“We have the smallest beef herd that we’ve had in 71 to 75 years, and we’re relying more and more on other countries,” Maxwell said. “It’s also about a national security and food security risk for the United States.”

Farm Action’s Rural Independence Initiative is part of a strategy the group plans to employ in the midterms and carry into the 2028 general election.