Ensure Economic Opportunity For Family Farmers

• Strong Safety Net for Family Farmers
• Prevent Anticompetitive Behavior Against Family Farms
• Regulate CAFOs
• Establish Country of Origin Labeling
• Encourage Organic and Local Agriculture
• Encourage Young People to Become Farmers
• Partner with Landowners to Conserve Private Lands

Support Rural Economic Development

• Provide capital for famers to create value-added enterprises
• Ensure that rural Americans have access to a modern communications infrastructure
• Promote Leadership in Renewable Energy

Improve Rural Quality Of Life

• Combat Methamphetamine use
• Improve Rural Education
• Invest in the core infrastructure, roads, bridges, locks, dams, water systems and essential air service that rural communities need.

Rural Issues

Agricultural Policies

• Expand access for U.S. agricultural producers to foreign markets, providing a great and lasting benefit to American farmers
• Fight to ensure that U.S. trade policies are in accord with bilateral and WTO trade agreements
• Address the Food Crisis Through Reduction of Trade Barriers and Improved World Markets
• Fight on behalf of family farmers to enact reasonable reforms to our crop insurance program and our system of countercyclical and direct payments
• Veto any bill containing special-interest favors and corporate welfare in any form. As president, John McCain will base our farm policy on the common good, with policies that help our small farmers to succeed, and our rural communities to survive and flourish once again. John McCain opposes providing billions to subsidize large commercial farms - those farms with an average income of $200,000, and an average net worth of $2 million
• Direct the USDA to carry out a comprehensive research approach to help develop more drought resistant higher yield crops and increase production per acre
• McCain supports fully funding Food and Nutrition Programs and carrying out a robust Emergency Food Assistance Program at a time when high food prices are hurting the neediest. He supports indexing food stamps to reflect the current cost of living and he would fill shortfalls in the Emergency Food Assistance Program
• McCain is opposed to federal policies that divert over 25 percent of corn out of the food supply and into subsidized ethanol production