JBS Gave Trump $5 Million. Now He’s Giving Them Our Farms.How Trump hooking up a foreign-owned giant is a death sentence for small-town America.
Over the Fourth of July week, my wife Marilyn and I drove back and forth across Missouri on I-70. Anyone who has driven that route understands how packed it is with billboards, for everything from strip clubs to cannabis shops. One billboard, however, stood out among the others, for the darkness of its message.
The twisted appeal to freedom is clear: none of us are free if big-ag isn’t free. Emblematic of the “Triumph of Doubt” society we have built, and the power of large corporations, particularly big ag, the billboard urges Missourians to protect our state by “standing up” for a foreign big-ag conglomerate (Bayer) that is literally killing us. (While using corrupt scientists, regulatory lobbying, and media campaigns to sow just enough doubt to keep it around) Marilyn, who works at the Natural Resources Defense Council, was furious. She has been watching foreign big-ag corporations buy off our politicians in order to destroy our state and suck the wealth out of our land and ship it overseas. Today, she talks about the Trump administration’s deep ties to one of these companies and the way the Trump administration is seeking to let them destroy small farmers. -Lucas I grew up on a farm. My parents worked sunup to sundown, season after season, to keep it alive. And still, it wasn’t enough. I was too young to remember the struggle my parents went through, I only remember moving out of it and that my dad was really sad about leaving it behind. Later on, I learned that we needed help the most that year, when we were on the brink, staring down impossible choices, and we didn’t get any. Not from the banks. Not from the government. Certainly not from the people in charge of regulating the industry. We lost the farm. And to this day, I believe that if the conditions then looked anything like what we’re facing now, there wouldn’t have even been a fight. Big Ag would have taken it clean. Because for every day farmers like my parents, we don’t ever get a break. Unlike the big guys. They get it all, every time. That’s why I began working in an environmental group, and that’s why Trump’s long-running rollback of agriculture and antitrust rules hits so close to home. Because I know what it means when the system stops protecting small producers. I know what it feels like to be squeezed out while the biggest players get every break in the book. And already, in the first six months of Trump’s second administration, JBS, the largest meatpacker in the world, is quietly winning yet another round. None of this should come as a shock. The Trump administration has never hidden where its loyalties lie, especially when it comes to big corporations that write big checks. A recent Federal Election Commission filing revealed that Pilgrim’s Pride, a U.S. subsidiary of JBS, made a $5 million donation to Trump’s second inaugural committee, the largest single contribution recorded. It wasn’t just generosity, either. The return on investment played out in real time as JBS quickly received approval for it’s previously stalled IPO despite significant evidence of corruption, monopoly practices, and other serious issues that could expose investors to outsized risk. If it wasn’t already clear, it is now: the White House is up for sale, and Big Ag is buying. While most of the media is busy trying to keep up with the Trump’s administration circus, big ag is quietly preparing to dismantle the USDA’s Packers and Stockyards Act reforms, the very rules designed to level the playing field between independent farmers and the corporate meatpacking giants like JBS, Tyson, and Cargill. Under the Biden administration, the USDA worked to restore key GIPSA (Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration) provisions that protected small and mid-sized producers and that the first Trump administration had gutted. They tried to address the fact that just four companies control over 80% of the beef in the US market, a staggering level of concentration that’s led to lower prices for farmers and higher prices for consumers. Let’s be clear: these aren’t “regulations hurting the free market.” These are the last remaining guardrails trying to preserve a free market at all. Companies like JBS use their scale and influence to suppress competition, dictate contract terms, retaliate against anyone who speaks out, and artificially inflate the price of beef in the supermarket. Big Ag just keeps winning while the rest of us, like my family growing up, just keep losing. One of Trump’s campaigns promises that he is also breaking by supporting JBS, is to support American businesses. JBS is a Brazilian company. And its goal is to suck the wealth out of the land in places like Missouri: nearly half of its global revenue comes from the United States. American cattle, American land, and American labor generate massive profits for this foreign-owned conglomerate that gives very little back to the communities it relies on. Missouri farmers aren’t seeing those profits. Neither are the local economies trying to hold on to a shrinking agricultural base. What they are seeing is market power so concentrated that a single company can dictate prices, control access to processing facilities, and push out any competitor that doesn’t play by its rules. There is no competition. Just corporate feudalism dressed up as capitalism. And it’s only getting worse. JBS has aggressively expanded its U.S. footprint through acquisitions and vertically integrated control of every stage of its meat supply chain. They own everything from slaughterhouses to trucking fleets to feed mills. For small farmers already struggling with razor-thin margins, this means less choice, less leverage, and fewer paths to market. If the current Trump administration continues down the same path as the last one, JBS won’t just dominate the meat industry. They will crush the remaining independent producers who are hanging on by a thread. If protecting American farms wasn’t a good enough reason, JBS’s history should be enough to give any lawmaker pause. JBS has been tied to some of the largest corruption scandals in Brazil’s history, including Operation Car Wash, a massive bribery investigation that implicated company executives in paying off politicians and laundering money through fake contracts. Here in the U.S., JBS and its subsidiaries have faced numerous lawsuits for price-fixing, worker exploitation, and fraud. This is not a company that operates with transparency or public interest in mind. It is a company that buys influence, crushes competition, and shrugs off the law as a cost of doing business. And beyond the courtroom, the consequences reach into the Amazon. JBS has been repeatedly linked to illegal deforestation in Brazil, where its beef supply chain has fueled environmental destruction on a global scale. The company promised reforms, but satellite evidence and investigative reporting tell a different story, and after president Trump’s election, the company back tracked on their word, saying that ‘they never made a pledge’. Why would we let a company that behaves so badly in its own backyard to come here and jack up our country? This is what a rigged system looks like. A corrupt foreign-owned meatpacking giant funneling millions into Trump’s political machine, getting special treatment from Washington, and sucking the wealth out of rural America. So many farm families, just like mine, have been crushed during the last few decades of consolidation. And it hurts so much to see it continue with no end in sight. Daughter of a farm family, Marilyn Kunce You're currently a free subscriber to Lucas’s Substack. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Monday, July 14, 2025
JBS Gave Trump $5 Million. Now He’s Giving Them Our Farms.
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