To the editor:

Our Barton Co. family farm was homesteaded by my great-great-grandfather in 1882. We raise wheat, soybeans, corn and alfalfa like most farms in the county. This is part of our livelihood.   

Now there is a new threat to our livelihood: the potential passage of a bill called the EATS Act, being promoted by Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall and Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson. If this legislation passes, it will uproot the very fabric of American farming and the families it sustains by invalidating thousands of state-level agriculture laws and authorizing that only federal standards can apply.

It’s a destructive elimination of local control of farming that has no precedent.

The EATS Act proposes to dismantle hard-fought state laws that support our farming families. Many of these are small, family-owned farms, all while paving the way for foreign corporations to buy up and control our country’s agriculture.

The repercussions would be devastating, leading to the undercutting of American family farmers, many who have devoted their lives to farming with care and love for what we do. It also would be a huge barrier for new farmers who want to start farming.

Congress has rejected this proposal twice before.

People are wondering why two politicians from states that should care about agriculture would try to enact this bill. In short, it’s because they’re only listening to large, faceless, international pork farming corporations that don’t like having to accommodate different state laws. Big corporate agriculture interests — especially foreign ones from China — find state laws inconvenient.

This will be devastating to us who run traditional family farms.

Gayle Christie

Ellinwood 

Co-Founder of Houston Rescue & Restore for victims of Human Trafficking