Independent family farmers are fighting for their survival – facing five years of sinking prices(often below the cost of production), mounting debt, rising bankruptcies, and a series of extreme weather events. While President Trump’s engagement in trade issues has made a bad situation worse, the current crisis will not disappear with a new trade deal. This system was designed for, and by, multinational agribusiness firms that have shaped our agricultural commodity sector to only be profitable for highly capitalized large-scale operations that these firms control. The below-signed farm and food organizations welcome new policy proposals by Presidential candidates and elected officials to finally address the root cause of the current crisis – the failure of current agricultural policy to limit vertical integration and the failure of free trade-dominated markets to pay farmers fairly for what they produce.