HELENA, Mont. -- Ranchers want to bring truth-in-labeling back for beef and pork in Montana.

A proposal in the Montana Legislature would ask retailers to put up signs in front of beef and pork that clarifies the product was born, raised and processed in the United States.

Otherwise, the meat would be described as imported or origin unlabeled.

Imported meat currently can use "Product of the USA" labeling even if it's repackaged here.

John Bailey, a member of the grassroots agriculture group Northern Plains Resource Council and a rancher in southeastern Montana, urged the change to help consumers.

"The vast majority of people tell us that they want to know where their food comes from," Bailey explained. "And I think that a 'COOL' bill, a country-of-origin labeling bill, is the way to start doing that."

Congress repealed the country-of-origin requirement in 2015. The World Trade Organization ruled it violated the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2011.

Imports from countries such as Brazil have driven the cost of beef down in the last few years.

Bailey noted that has affected Montana ranchers.

"After COOL was repealed, our prices dropped by about $1 a pound," Bailey recounted. "Well, that's $600 an animal. To the average rancher, that's a pretty significant hit."

Bailey also pointed out COVID-19 has revealed the importance of local food sources.

"The pandemic has brought attention to the fact that we need to have a safe, reliable, domestic source of meat, and right now we don't," Bailey asserted.

The legislation, House Bill 324, had a hearing in the House Agriculture Committee last week.

A labor union representing agricultural workers in Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia says it isn't waiting around for federal immigration reform to continue pushing for undocumented workers' rights.

Nearly 200 delegates recently voted to re-elect union President Baldemar Velasquez to a 14th term. Velasquez said the Farm Labor Organizing Committee plans to focus on defending workers employed on some of the state's largest farms who often face wage and working-conditions exploitation.

"Laying the groundwork for talks we want to have with some of those big farms," he said, "and with the greenhouse industry in that Norwalk area."

According to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, thousands of migrant and seasonal workers enter the state each year to work on farms, in processing plants and at other agriculture-based businesses. An estimated 5,600 migrant workers currently are employed across the state.

Velasquez added that FLOC also plans to collaborate with other unions in fields where undocumented workers are overrepresented.

"The United Food and Commercial workers, a landscaping/greenhouse type of effort further east in Ohio," he said, "so we want to make sure we partner with other unions who have an interest in this, because it's going to help raise the boat for everybody."

Looking forward to the next four years of his term, Velasquez said one of the union's biggest priorities will be family farms. He pointed out that the narrative that pits farm workers against farmers must be changed, and noted that small farmers and migrant workers have shared economic interests.

"One of the resolutions we passed was to form an alliance between small family farmers and farm workers and negotiate 'up' in the supply chain," he said, "creating pressure so we can create a sustainable pricing system to maintain those small family farms, so that we can preserve our jobs."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says wages for crop and livestock workers have risen 1.1% annually over the past three decades. Within the last few years, farm wages grew by nearly 3%, largely due to producers' difficulty finding farm labor.

Farmers are facing record-high land prices due to a bevy of factors.

According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, Virginia farm real estate prices have risen 8.5% in the last four years, and cost is not the only problem farmers face in trying to acquire land. Some Black farmers find it challenging to lay claim to their place in the ag industry.

Duron Chavis, board member of the Central Virginia Agrarian Commons, said the lack of intergenerational wealth among Black families is a major factor in trying to buy farmland.

"If I don't have the money, I don't have the money," Chavis acknowledged. "The reality is it's not like I can go walk into a bank and be like, 'Hey, I'd like to get an equity loan on a home that I don't even own,' if I'm a renter. That's just not how the system works."

He sees more immediate solutions to the issue as land redistribution and reparative justice. A 2022 study from the American Economic Association Journal examines Black land loss from 1920 to 1997, and found the compounded value of the loss is roughly $326 billion.

John Ikerd, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri, said farmland prices pose other challenges. For anyone who wants to get into agriculture, paying several thousand dollars per acre eats through a lot of the startup funds for the farm needed to get going. He added there are also challenges for current farmers.

"If things are going to continue as it has in the past, if you're one of the farmers that's been expanding and got a lot of land, got a lot of equity, you're going to continue to compete for the prices," Ikerd pointed out. "I think what we're going to see is, we're going to see fewer and fewer farmers that can compete."

Ikerd believes land and farms should be sold to the people who are actually working the land, rather than large, investor-owned farms consolidating available acreage. He said one of the bigger concerns is the land being used for all its profitability, and then being sold after it's depleted.

Farmers in and around Virginia are working to educate children about agriculture and provide a deeper understanding of their work. These programs don't just teach kids about farming, but are designed for them to understand where their food comes from. Other goals include dispelling certain ideals about what farming is.

Tyrone Power Cherry III, representative of the Petersburg League of Urban Growers, is working to show the benefits of farming to youth in the area. One thing he hopes kids will learn is that farming is for everyone.

"You automatically assume that it's just old white guys that farm and they do it in places that are not urban," Cherry said. "They do it in rural areas or, as a kid would say, 'they do it in the country.' So, what we're dispelling right now is, we're introducing them to urban agriculture, which is sort of different. The way I explain it to the youth is, 'You might have heard jazz, you might have heard different types of music, but then you heard hip-hop.' "

He is dispelling other misconceptions about farming, including that it is only done in rural areas, and involves back-breaking labor. As a longtime educator, he feels the goal of education is empowerment. By teaching the kids about farming and agriculture, he wants them to understand that they are the future of that industry. He said this is a way to improve the area and lift it out of the food desert that it is in.

Kathryn Eckman, farm-to-school coordinator at the New Roots Community Farm, said watching kids learn about food has been interesting. She finds kids are learning what makes an area a "food desert" and how to change it.

Eckman said one of the bigger challenges is getting families to understand how local and healthier foods can be accessible.

"I think a lot of families in the area didn't grow up with the same opportunities as their students are and so they kind of maybe have a little bit of rejection around farm to school," she said. "And, they see things like local food, organic food, things like that. and they're like, 'That's not for us.' "

Eckman hopes to have high school students join the program in the future, and teach them how to plan and profit from crops. She said aid should be made available to high schoolers who are interested in farming by connecting them to scholarships that would further their education. Overall, she wants to ensure kids have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and to enhance their agricultural horizons.