The Corporate Capture of Missouri Agriculture: How SB 14 Paves the Way for Big Ag Land Grabs

An investigation into how pesticide legislation, corporate interests, and natural asset schemes threaten Missouri's small farmers. Kehoe's Political Calculus is ruthless: Small Farmers don't matter.

Missouri Senate Bill 14, introduced by Senator Justin Brown, comes across as simple pesticide registration legislation at first glance. Yet, it begs the question of why this bill needs to be introduced in the first place. Senator Brown shouldn’t introduce bills simply because he finds himself out of ways to occupy himself in Jefferson City. If he had applied some critical thinking skills, which, admittedly, is probably not why he was elected or selected to present this bill by his handlers, he would have wondered what its true purpose was.

A deeper investigation and reflection reveal this bill as part of a sophisticated strategy to squeeze out small farmers while protecting corporate interests—particularly those of Bayer/Monsanto, which maintains significant operations in St. Louis and overseas.

The EPA Shield

The bill's key provision, Section 10, states:

"Any pesticide registered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)... shall be sufficient to satisfy any requirement for a warning label regarding cancer under any other provision of current law."

This language effectively uses EPA registration as a shield against additional safety requirements or liability—even as scientific evidence mounts regarding cancer risks from pesticide exposure.

This seemingly innocuous language creates a powerful corporate shield by:

1. Using FIFRA Registration as Cover:

   • FIFRA doesn't require proof of absolute safety

   • Uses industry-friendly "risk-benefit" analysis

   • Relies on company-funded studies

   • Allows known dangerous chemicals if deemed economically beneficial

2. Exploiting EPA Limitations:

   • EPA registration process lacks independent verification

   • No requirement for long-term human health studies

   • Heavy reliance on industry-provided data

   • Limited post-market safety monitoring

3. Creating Legal Protection:

   • Prevents additional state-level warning requirements

   • Shields manufacturers from liability

   • Uses federal bureaucracy as legal defense

   • Limits future safety measures

4. Shifting Burden to Farmers:

   • Forces them to pay registration fees

   • Exposes them to health risks

   • Limits their legal recourse

   • It makes them fund their own regulation

As Shield Maidens reports:

"THIS is such a betrayal of the people and the perfect illustration of the Cindy O'Laughlin and Jon Patterson corporate corruption agenda."

This shield mechanism uses federal bureaucracy to protect corporate interests while exposing farmers to health risks and financial burdens. Senator Brown, along with his handlers, have decided that they would rather have Monsanto/Bayer money than they would have cancer-free farmers. Once those checks clear, they will make sure this bill passes in April, and they will sleep easily knowing that the farmers they helped make sick won’t be able to do anything about it.

The Science Behind the Risk

I chose a few of the top peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the serious health risks of pesticide exposure, particularly glyphosate. However, if you follow this link, you can review many more.

The Agricultural Health Study

The Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2018) reports significant findings from the Agricultural Health Study, which followed 57,310 pesticide applicators:

• Found an increased risk for acute myelogenous leukemia in the highest exposure group

• The risk ratio of 2.44 in the highest exposure quartile

• Examined cancer incidence over an extended period (2001-2013)

• Demonstrated risks even with limited exposure (median 38.75 lifetime days)

Dr. Elizabeth Ward notes in her editorial:

"Evaluating the potential for glyphosate exposure to increase cancer risks in humans is important due to its widespread and increasing use in the United States and globally and indications of potential carcinogenicity from toxicologic and epidemiologic studies."

Greek Agricultural Region Study

A 2011 case-control study in Larissa, Greece (Kokouva et al., BMC Public Health) found pesticide exposure associated with:

• 46% increased risk for all lymphohematopoietic cancers

• 87% increased risk for myelodysplastic syndrome

• 114% increased risk for leukemia

The study also identified critical risk factors that SB 14 fails to address:

"Smoking and eating during pesticide application were strongly associated with total LHC cases... This association was even stronger when eating simultaneously with pesticide application."

Manufacturing Workers Study

A comprehensive meta-analysis of pesticide manufacturing workers (Van Maele-Fabry et al., Environmental Research, 2008) found:

• 43% increased risk of leukemia overall

• 699% increased risk for myeloid leukemia specifically

• Consistent increases across all pesticide groups studied

The authors concluded:

"This meta-analysis provides quantitative evidence of an association between leukaemia and pesticide exposure in manufacturing plants... supporting the suggestion that exposure to pesticides may be a causal factor for leukaemia."

The Missouri Connection

As the evidence mounts against pesticides, particularly glyphosate, our Missouri legislation has decided that they can reduce the risks to our farmers by slapping a label on the package and making our farmers pay for it.

This is similar to the sin tax our legislation slaps on alcohol and tobacco products, and our Reps and Senators act as if they have cured cancer or drunk driving. Yet, like getting paid off by Phillip Morris or Anheuser-Busch, our legislation gets payments sent to their PACs through back channels controlled by Governor Mike Kehoe.

As reported by Shield Maidens of Missouri, this legislation is being fast-tracked through both chambers with significant corporate backing:

"Their main lobbyists are the BLUNT FAMILY LOBBYING MACHINE OF HUSCH BLACKWELL... Amy Blunt is a registered lobbyist for Bayer/Monsanto."

Former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, now working for Husch Blackwell, has appeared at hearings representing Bayer/Monsanto's interests. These individuals would help companies give your grandparents cancer, write the bills to protect the companies from being sued, and then help these companies come and buy your grandparent’s foreclosed homes from the banks.

The Financial Trap

The bill creates a predatory fee structure that disproportionately impacts small farmers while benefiting large corporations:

Small Farmer Impact

A typical small farmer may use 10 different pesticide products face new fee costs that he didn’t face this past year:

• Base registration costs: $2,000 annually ($200 per product)

• Potential late fees: $500 if products are needed mid-season

• Total possible cost: $2,500 just in registration fees

If a small farmer who keeps his budget lean doesn’t pay for all of this new registration on time because he hadn’t counted on a new pesticide at the start of the year, he must pay the $50 late fee per product. The bill doesn’t seem to limit this late registration fee or even the product registration fees, allowing for the fees to balloon overtime to pay for the new administrative state created by the fees collected.

This creates a perverse scenario where:

• Farmers must pay to expose themselves to carcinogens

• The state profits from allowing dangerous products

• Companies avoid labeling costs through state registration

• Farmers bear both health risks and financial burden

There has to be a circle of hell for this type of depravity and fraud on the taxpayer. It is designed to work against the small farmer, the hobbyist, or the homesteader. It is designed to keep large corporations in business because the product fees are not a burden to them, while edging out small farmers while also making them pay for the thing that could kill them rather than holding the large corporations who make the dangerous chemicals responsible despite the overwhelming evidence their product increases the risk for cancer.

Large companies like Bayer/Monsanto benefit twice:

1. Sell products to farmers

Profit from farmers' inability to stock up early

• They can register product lines once and distribute year-round

• Their per-acre registration cost is fractional compared to small farmers

Most perversely, manufacturers could include required cancer warnings in their existing label printing of the products—a neglible cost they've convinced the state to transform into a complex fee structure paid by those at risk.

It begs another question. Why are they holding the small farmers at risk for the actions of Bayer/Monsanto? Bayer has a long history of using its state relationships and corporate influence to cause harm, from the Holocaust to water and food shortages in South America to glyphosate. It is a bad actor that doesn’t seem to learn from its history.

Yet, on Feb. 4, 2025, Governor Mike Kehoe and US Senator Roy Blunt welcome them with open arms. What does that tell you about the morality of Kehoe and Blunt who seem blinded by green dollar signs.

The Political Players

As Shield Maidens of Missouri reports, this legislation is being driven by a well-connected network of corporate interests and political operatives:

The political machinery includes:

Governor Mike Kehoe, whom Shield Maidens notes: "IT IS LIKELY THAT MIKE KEHOE TOOK BIG CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BAYER/MONSANTO INTERESTS TO WIN THE GOVERNOR'S RACE. THIS IS WHY THE BILL IS BEING FAST TRACKED IN MISSOURI."

Former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, who Shield Maidens identifies as "working for the Blunts lobbying machine... representing Bayer/Monsanto. They pulled out the big guns for this one. Roy Blunt and Catherine Hanaway wielding a big stick to get their clients immunity in Missouri."

Shield Maidens emphasizes the coordinated nature of this effort:

"NOTICE HOW MANY STATES ARE SEEING THE SAME LEGISLATION TO SHIELD BAYER/MONSANTO RAGE ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. THEY CANNOT GET THIS ACROSS THE LINE AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL SO THEY COME TO THE STATES TO TRY TO BUY FAVOR WITH STATE LEGISLATORS TO BUILD THEIR IMMUNITY STATE BY STATE."

The bill's sponsor, Senator Brown (16), is pushing legislation that Shield Maidens warns "feels strangely similar to the push to pass a bill called SB 51, which gave doctors, vaccine companies, hospitals, and those who administered and forced the shots on innocent Missourians blanket immunity if harm was caused."

The State's Role in Destroying the Small Farmer

The legislation makes Missouri lawmakers complicit by:

• Collecting fees from farmers exposed to health risks

• Creating administrative costs paid by potential victims

• Providing legal protection to manufacturers rather than potential victims

• Adding costs to end users while limiting their legal recourse

The state is saying, “We'll let you give our farmers cancer, but we'll take our pound of flesh from the farmers, too." This allows for the creation of a new administrative office, which can then create new regulations and protect the interests of Bayer/Monsanto and large agriculture farms.

Section 3 of SB 14 directs fees to the "agriculture protection fund," forcing small farmers to subsidize:

• Their regulatory burden

• Administrative systems that disadvantage them

• Infrastructure benefiting larger operations

The Land Grab Strategy

This goes deeper than just making the farmers sick and paying for their own damnation into Bureaucratic hell. Elizabeth Nickson explains how this fits into a larger pattern:

"For the past thirty years, [Big Money Funds/People] have paid to suppress economic activity across America - the United States and Canada - in order to ripen an investment in something called, um….like a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Or Natural Asset Corporation."

The strategy in Missouri appears to be much like the International plan:

1. Burden small farmers with fees and regulations

2. Expose them to health risks while limiting liability

3. Create financial pressure through medical costs and fees

4. Force land sales to larger corporations

5. Convert some land to "restorative farming" or conservation

Restorative farming is all the rage in the United Nations. It has been used in poorer nations to force small farmers out of their land, and then predatory large corporations come in and take over the land, either buying for Natural Asset Companies (land that cannot be used and is traded on the stock market for its supposed mineral, natural resources, or subjective value) or sitting and waiting for development.

The Broader Pattern: NACs, DNR, and Land Control

The pesticide legislation fits into a larger land consolidation and control strategy, operating through private and public partnerships, creating a special class of protection for large agricultural firms and the chemical companies creating the cancer-causing carcinogens. Once the labels are on the products, the small farmer is left out in the cold, forced into smaller and smaller market shares while being penalized for daring to exist.

Nickson details how this works:

"What the left has done is create something they call 'participatory democracy', which means that activists, paid by NGOs, fight any and all economic activity in every jurisdiction to the point where anyone with a brain says, like I did, 'Why bother?'"

They aim to eliminate the small farmer by regulatory burdens and fine him out of existence. The small farmer is a danger to their control over the food supply; this bill is one laminated layer of that regulatory pressure that, once applied, will not be easily scraped away.

Missouri's State Control Mechanism

Missouri's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) effectively functions as a government-operated Natural Asset Company, controlling:

• Over 900,000 acres of state parks and historic sites

• 88 state parks and historic sites

• More than 150,000 acres of state forest

• Making Missouri one of the top states for government land control

This extensive DNR control creates a dual pressure on farmers:

1. Private pressure through:

   • Pesticide registration fees

   • Health risks

   • Limited legal recourse

   • Financial burdens

2. Public pressure through:

   • DNR regulations

   • Land use restrictions

   • Conservation requirements

   • Access limitations

As Nickson observes:

"Without the 'participating democrats' being paid to create harm and chaos the largest plurality of us want growth. Good growth that considers local culture. THAT LAND IS OURS ANYWAY, not Trump's or Larry Fink's to sell off."

The DNR acts as another layer of this pressure, controlling up to seven percent of our land through state and federal parks. The DNR absorbs farmland, but it doesn't give it back once it has taken it in. Land doesn’t return to private hands or ownership but becomes locked away like a NAC, permanently removed from the food supply chain.

The End Game

This two-pronged strategy aims to:

1. Force small farmers off their land through financial pressure

2. Convert some lands to "conservation" under DNR control

3. Allow corporate acquisition of prime agricultural land

4. Create "restorative farming" projects that limit production

5. Concentrate land control in fewer hands

The result mirrors what Nickson describes as:

"The very very rich... cruise the world looking for acquisitions, so they can collect more rent from their slaves, us... Those people paid for America's decline — so they could buy us out."

Ironically, the corporations behind producing more food are also behind limiting farmers’ ability to grow food. Because for them, it is essential to be able to continue to sell a product that has been banned in twenty-eight countries. Rather than lose the market in the United States, they plan to use the regulations of the EPA and state legislators like Justin Brown and executives Mike Kehoe to continue killing farmers rather than to develop a new safe pesticide. They fear innovation, but they do not fear our government.

Missouri's substantial DNR footprint and corporate-friendly legislation like SB 14 facilitate perfect conditions for this land control strategy. The state's DNR effectively serves as a prototype for how NACs could function—controlling vast land resources while restricting traditional agricultural use and local economic development. Kehoe has already sold us to China (400,000 acres so far that we know about). Do you think he minds killing off a few small farmers who can’t buy his vote or pay for his PAC?

Kehoe talks about his mother and being raised by a single mom. Yet, he has no problem making widows and orphans out of other people.

Conclusion

SB 14 represents more than pesticide regulation—it's part of a sophisticated strategy to consolidate agricultural control under corporate interests while putting small farmers at risk for life-threatening cancer and losing their generational farms. The bill paves the way for large-scale land acquisition under the guise of regulation through financial pressure, health risks, and liability shields.

The question remains: Will Missouri legislators protect their constituents or serve corporate interests working to acquire their land?

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*Sources: Missouri SB 14, Shield Maidens of Missouri Substack, Elizabeth Nickson Substack, BMC Public Health (2011), Environmental Research (2008), Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2018)*

Timeline

2010s

• 2011: Roy Blunt elected to U.S. Senate

• 2013: Amy Blunt registered as a Monsanto lobbyist

• 2015: WHO's IARC classifies glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic"

• 2016: Blunt family begins coordinating Bayer-Monsanto merger lobbying

• 2018: Bayer acquires Monsanto for $63 billion

• 2019: First major Roundup cancer verdicts

2020s

• 2020: Roy Blunt pushes against stricter pesticide regulations

• 2021: Blunt announces retirement from Senate

• 2022: Blunt family expands lobbying operations

• 2023: Mike Kehoe announces run for governor

• 2024: NYSE/SEC proposes Natural Asset Companies

• 2025: SB 14 introduced with Blunt family backing

The Blunt Power Structure

Family Connections

• Roy Blunt: Former Senator, key Monsanto ally

• Andy Blunt: Leading Missouri lobbyist

• Matt Blunt: Former Governor, corporate consultant

• Amy Blunt: Bayer/Monsanto lobbyist at Husch Blackwell

Key Corporate Ties

• Husch Blackwell: Primary Bayer/Monsanto legal representation

• Lobbying contracts with:

  • Bayer/Monsanto

  • Agricultural chemical companies

  • Land development interests

  • Conservation groups