Angela Huffman - Why Are Food Prices Rising While Farmers Struggle?

Angela Huffman is the co-founder and president of Farm Action, a watchdog organization working to dismantle corporate consolidation across the U.S. food supply chain. In this conversation, she unpacks how a handful of corporations came to shape what ends up on America's dinner plates, and what it will take to shift that power back toward farmers, workers, and consumers.Two hundred years ago, Angela's family put down roots on a patch of land in northwest Ohio. Six generations later, she's still there, raising Katahdin sheep between trips to Washington, D.C., where she splits her time lobbying for the very kind of family farm she grew up visiting. Her path wasn't a straight line. It wound through a year teaching English in Japan, where a convenience-store sandwich quietly exposed how broken American food had become. It passed through a volunteer stint gathering signatures for an Ohio animal welfare ballot measure, and a slow-dawning realization that the farmers she loved were getting squeezed, not by the weather, but by the market itself.That realization became Farm Action. With co-founder Joe, Angela built an organization that treats research as the foundation and communication as the lever. The work starts by uncovering how corporate power distorts the food system, then translating it into language the public and policymakers can actually act on. When egg prices spiked during the avian flu, her team dug in and showed that the largest producers had zero outbreaks yet were posting record profits. The narrative shifted. Prices came down.Episode in a glance1:32 Meet Angela Huffman, sixth-generation Ohio farmer with roots 200 years deep2:05 Life on the farm raising Katahdin sheep while balancing policy work3:36 From farm kid to policy advocate: realizing farmers needed a stronger voice4:47 Discovering a different food system in Japan17:03 Co-founding Farm Action: taking on corporate consolidation in agriculture19:14 Volunteering on the 2010 Ohio farm animal welfare ballotAbout Angela HuffmanAngela Huffman is the co-founder and president of Farm Action, a national advocacy organization fighting corporate consolidation across the U.S. food and agriculture system. A sixth-generation Ohio farmer with a background in English and public policy from Ohio State, Angela has spent more than 15 years at the intersection of farming, communications, and federal policy, translating on-the-ground realities into pressure that moves lawmakers.Connect with Angela Huffman and her work with Farm ActionAngela on LinkedIn → Angela HuffmanFarm Action → farmaction.usSend us a message!