ATR: @realJohnKempf talks about what a Trump / @RobertKennedyJr admin will mean for agriculture

About this episode

Recorded days after Trump's 2024 election win, this Ag Tribes Report episode brings back John Kempf, CEO of Advancing Eco Agriculture and a friend of RFK Jr., to game out what an RFK-influenced administration could mean for farming. Kempf explains the Amish community's unusual mobilization for Trump, tracing it to years of FDA raids on Amos Miller's raw-milk farm and Kennedy's rally there, while pushing back on the inflated "200,000 Amish voters" figure circulating online. The conversation moves through a string of policy flashpoints — glyphosate's likely gradual (not sudden) phase-down, robotics as the realistic labor substitute rather than a return to intensive manual work, the US's heavy reliance on imported fresh produce as a national-security vulnerability, ethanol mandates burning 40% of the corn crop for what Kempf calls purely political reasons, and crop insurance's need to evolve to support regenerative practices. The episode's sharpest institutional critique lands when Kempf invokes a "consumer trust index" showing farmers ranked near clergy in public trust while agribusiness ranks near pharma companies at the bottom — and argues agribusiness deliberately weaponizes farmers as their lobbying proxies on Capitol Hill because of this trust gap. He also cites Austin Frerick's book "Barons" for the line that the Farm Bill exists to benefit companies like Cargill, not farmers themselves. Kempf's Peter Thiel Paradox answer — that GMOs solve the wrong problem, since pest/disease susceptibility is a nutrition/microbiome issue rather than a genetic one — draws agreement from Vance, who nonetheless cautions that any transition away from chemical/GMO agriculture must build a parallel system rather than abruptly removing the current one, given that soils and cropping ecosystems have become, in Kempf's words, "drug addicts" that would suffer withdrawal.

“It's my understanding that he is licensed and is legal in the state of Pennsylvania with the raw milk certificate... but the FDA has really been trying to make an example out of him... I think his commitment that this demonization of healthy local food would go away with his engagement is what shifted the tide.”

“Farmers rank close to the top of the consumer trust index right alongside the clergy. Agribusiness ranks close to the bottom of the consumer trust index, along with pharmaceuticals companies... and big agribusiness knows this, they're smart about this. This is why they train farmers to go lobby for them on Capitol Hill.”

“The farm bill is not written for the benefit of farmers. It is written for the benefit of Cargill... Farmers appear to be the beneficiaries, but they are being farmed by Cargill.”

Key moments

• The FDA's raids on Amos Miller's raw-milk farm as the driver of unusual Amish political mobilization for Trump/RFK.
• Kempf's "consumer trust index" claim — farmers rank near clergy in public trust, agribusiness ranks near pharma at the bottom, and agribusiness exploits this by fielding farmers as lobbyists.
• The claim, sourced from Austin Frerick's "Barons," that the Farm Bill is written to benefit Cargill, not farmers.
• Kempf's Peter Thiel Paradox answer that GMOs are "an excellent solution to the wrong problem" because pest resistance is a nutrition/microbiome issue, not genetic.
• The Bitcoin land-price report — Bitcoin's post-election spike to $76,015, with one Bitcoin now buying 5.4 acres of Ohio farmland.