Modern Agriculture and RFK Jr.’s Vision: A Farmer’s Insight

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks,” said Robert F. Kennedy in 1964. “They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.”

I’m old enough to remember the shocking murder of RFK. Sometimes I wonder what the future would have looked like if he had survived his assassination in 1968.

I’ve also watched with interest the political rise of his son, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is now President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services—and I’d like to offer some thoughts as a farmer who has witnessed a lot of history and definitely does not want to see it stopped in its tracks.

Promising to “make America healthy again,” as RFK, Jr., has done, is a worthy goal. We’ll learn more about this vision in the weeks ahead, as the media probes his record and the Senate holds confirmation hearings. Many of these conversations will focus on Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines, the fluoridation of water, and chemicals in sunscreen.

The nominee will have a chance to explain what he thinks and whether his ideas have evolved.

I’m ready to listen.

I’d also like to offer a few thoughts about a topic I know well: modern agriculture.

When farmers interact with the federal government, it is usually with the Department of Agriculture, not HHS. Yet the rules and regulations of HHS also shape our food systems. Kennedy has spoken with enthusiasm about organic farming and he has expressed doubts about genetically modified crops, or GMOs.

Organic farming has a place in our food supply, especially when it responds to consumer demands. If people want it, farmers will grow it.

Yet we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that organic farming can replace the advanced methods of the 21st century. Sri Lanka recently learned this lesson the hard way. Our approach to agriculture must be geared toward the future while grounded in common sense and rooted in sound science.

My father was an organic farmer—but then so was every farmer in his generation. This was no “comfortable past.” With limited technology, they had no choice. Their lives were full of toil, achieving levels of production that were sometimes acceptable for their time but are unacceptable for ours.

In recent decades, we’ve made enormous progress. We benefit from a revolution in agricultural technology—and GM technology in crops is at its center.

These safe and healthy crops have produced bounties that my father never could have imagined. Before GM crops, I was delighted if an acre generated 150 bushels of corn. Today, an acre of GM corn should yield 225 bushels or more. We’ve seen similar increases in soybeans.

That’s because GM crops contain natural abilities to fight pests and weeds. In fact, the advent of Bt corn, a common type of GM technology, has allowed farmers like me to eliminate insecticides entirely. We still deploy safe crop-protection tools, such as herbicides to reduce weeds and fungicides to prevent disease, but GM crops have allowed us to cut down our overall use of sprays.

This science-based approach to weed control has made the soil healthier because we’ve moved beyond the practice of plowing, which can do a good job of destroying weeds but also leads to soil erosion as well as the loss of moisture and biodiversity. Technology permits us to plant cover crops and limit our disruptions of the soil.

Because GM and other technologies have let us grow more food on less land than ever before, farmers in the United States and around the world can keep pace with a rising population as well as participate in conservation.

I’m even able to remove portions of my farm from food production, devoting strips of land on each side of a creek to grass. This improves water quality and helps wildlife. When I mow these sections, I also preserve habitat, avoiding the stands of milkweed because they are so important to monarch butterflies.

Kennedy never to my knowledge has proposed a ban on GM crops or called for a mandate that all farmers switch to organic crops. That’s good, because either would result in less food, additional food inflation, and a weaker environment.

American farmers are ready to join Kennedy to make America healthy again by using first-rate science and agriculture’s best technology.