Now, a week past the 2024 election, we’re at the brink of momentous shifts in how our food system functions—and for whom. Food and ag organizations across the country are weighing in on what the election could bring. What better time to ask our Civil Eats advisors and other leading thinkers in food about how they’re responding to this moment, what to expect from the new administration, and how to move forward? Below, they’ve generously shared their thoughts and insights on the future of food and ag during Trump 2.0. We encourage you to continue this conversation by adding your voices in the comments section.
Chef José Andrés, founder of the Global Food Institute at George Washington University
Chef Jose Andres. (Photo credit: Ethan Miller, Getty Images)
Food is not just fuel—it’s a powerful way to strengthen communities, rebuild economies, heal the planet, and improve health. But as a country, we often fail to give food the importance it deserves, and too many policies in Washington overlook the real solutions I see in small towns and big cities all across America.
The current political climate of division and exclusion leaves everyday Americans—hardworking farmers, first-generation restaurant owners, children in need of a healthy school meal—vulnerable. When policies fail to recognize their struggles, it isn’t just an oversight; it’s a neglect of the people who make up the fabric of our nation.
But I know we can prioritize food in a way that brings dignity and prosperity to all. That’s why I created the Global Food Institute at George Washington University to help America’s leaders—in government, business, and nonprofits—use food as a force for change. We must ensure that those who feed America are able to feed themselves. This is especially true for immigrant communities who keep our food system functioning, from fields to kitchens. Without them, the system collapses. Fair labor practices and common-sense immigration reform are the solutions, not deportations and family separations that destabilize our country and betray its ideals.
In my work responding to emergencies with World Central Kitchen, I don’t see red or blue communities; just neighbors feeding neighbors. Hunger knows no political party, and access to food should never be withheld or politicized. Working together, I know we can tackle hunger and the many problems it represents, such as poverty and poor health.
I believe we’ll find our strength in building longer tables where everyone is welcome. By coming together around food, we can find common ground and fuel ourselves to continue fighting for a healthier America. This is a moment to choose compassion over division, to recognize that food is a right, not a privilege. Together, let’s make food our first act of solidarity.
Mark Bittman, author and journalist
Mark Bittman. (Photo credit: Neilson Barnard, Getty Images)
The plan “before” was to make sure that SNAP benefits remained intact, that the few significant steps forward by the Biden administration in food and farming were preserved, that conditions for immigrants would not worsen, that food workers’ rights would be improved, that newly invigorated agencies would take tougher stands on the uses of pesticides and antibiotics, and that there’d be some progress in supporting new and would-be farmers, marginalized farmers, and farmers who dare to practice agroecology.
Most of those forward-looking goals will have to be pared back. The most important fights are likely to be around defending farmworkers’ and other foodworkers’ right to stay in the United States; against absurd protectionist tariffs; to protect SNAP, and farm conservation programs, and anything progressive that’s happened in USDA; and to continue to hammer home the reality of the need to deal with the climate crisis.
We might have imagined we were finished with some of that, and indeed, a Harris administration likely would have given us opportunities to push a progressive food and farming agenda to a new point, especially because we imagined less energy would have been spent on immigrants’ rights, the climate struggle, protecting SNAP.
We know that Trump is mercurial and unpredictable, and we don’t know where the emphases of his new team will lie. What we think we know—are pretty sure of—is that the actions of the new government will have to be fought with renewed energy and that we will have victories amid our defeats.
We must be prepared for opportunities as they arise, and to find new battlegrounds on which we might win. But at the very least we can be pretty sure we’re going to be struggling to hold the line against cuts in entitlement programs like SNAP, and against the threat and promise of mass exportations, which are inhumane, immoral, and even unpractical. This food system cannot work without foreign-born workers.
Navina Khanna, executive director and co-founder, HEAL Food Alliance
Navina Khanna.
This is not the outcome we wanted, but it is an outcome we’re prepared for. The deep love each of us holds for our communities, our shared vision of what is possible, and the ways that we work together continues to give me hope for the fight that is to come.
HEAL launched just weeks after Trump took office in 2017, and since then, we’ve seen time and again that in moments of crisis, organizations across the movement have come together to block the worst outcomes, protect each other and our wins, and build a future in which each of us can thrive. I have so much confidence that we will continue to do so, but we need to be organized.
For example, there are very real threats already being made to immigrant communities, including food and farmworkers. Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who is expected to be named deputy chief of staff for policy in the next term, never really went away, but with him back in the administration, we can expect further attempts to roll back support for BIPOC producers. We know that SNAP and school meals are at risk.
This moment calls on us to show up together. We need to stay connected, to deepen our relationships with each other, and to be ready to mobilize when our communities come under attack. This moment depends on all of us bringing our strengths—communications prowess, legal expertise, organizing skills, financial resources, ancestral knowledge—to the fight.
And even as we fight the worst, now is also a time for us to continue to build a new world. As a movement, folks organizing for food and farm justice have long imagined and cultivated systems that exist beyond and outside of a political system that was never designed for life to thrive.
May we continue to nourish and grow what we are building, and with our blood and political ancestors at our back, to claim power with our people.
