For decades, mega-corporations and billionaires have wreaked havoc on our environment, economy, and political system for profit. They have endangered essential resources — clean water, sustainable food, and a livable climate — and made life worse for families and workers. As a result, we face a warming planet and climate-fueled disasters; increasingly unsafe and unaffordable food; and rampant water contamination and corporate water grabs.

The recent chaos of the Musk-Trump administration is the latest addition to this trend. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are working to dismantle, loot, and privatize our federal government. Their aim: to transfer more wealth to their powerful friends, while ending basic services and protections for vast swaths of the country.

But Food & Water Watch has twenty years of experience winning against moneyed interests to defend our shared resources. We’ve beaten the odds by building people power and pushing our leaders to enact real solutions.

Now, at this grave and pivotal moment, we’re leveraging the lessons we’ve learned over those two decades. Our newest Strategic Plan lays out our strategy and goals for the next four years. With your investment, we’ll carry out this plan to fight corporate greed and win a livable future for all.

Doubling Down on Our Tried-and-True Organizing Model

Since 2005, Food & Water Watch’s work has brought tangible improvements to people’s lives. Our wins curtail pollution, defend affordable food and water, and lay the groundwork for massive investments in green jobs, clean water, renewable energy, and more. Moreover, we’ve shifted the debate within the environmental movement on critical issues like fracking and factory farms.

A central part of our strategic plan is doubling down on the organizing model that has made these victories possible.

It starts with bringing people together around issues that affect their daily lives — safe and sustainable food, clean and affordable water, and a livable climate. We demand bold policies to protect our most essential resources and hold corporations accountable. We undertake careful, strategic analysis of the political landscape — our strengths, our opponents, and how and where we can make the most difference. 

We then build strength in numbers to take on strategic tactics like letters, phone calls, and rallies, pressuring specific elected targets to enact the policies we need. This is all driven by on-the-ground organizing with staff, volunteers, coalition partners, and frontline community members. 

They also work hand-in-hand with Food & Water Watch researchers, lawyers, and policy experts. Together, we expose injustices, corporate lies, and pollution; hold power to account in the Courts; craft legislation; connect communities with their elected officials; and educate our supporters and the public.

Over the next four years, we will continue to use this winning model to stop the most dangerous parts of the corporate-driven Musk-Trump agenda. At the same time, we’ll expand hard-won protections for food, water, and climate at the state and local level.

We’re Building People Power For the Long Haul

To reach our goals, we’ll continue strengthening our power and expanding our reach and capacity. To overcome corporate interests, we need a broad-based, diverse, and united movement of people taking action. We’re building people power for the long haul to create a livable future for everyone, including future generations.

Over the next four years, we’re focusing on growing engagement with volunteers. We’re training, educating, and activating more people nationwide, giving them the tools to make change at all levels of government. 

Importantly, we’re allying with groups on the frontlines of these issues — people fighting factory farms, water privatization, and fossil fuel projects in their own backyards. Supporting and partnering with frontline groups is key to reaching our goals, as is resisting efforts by the far-right to divide, scapegoat, and attack our most vulnerable neighbors. 

We’re stronger together and we won’t leave communities behind.

So far, we’ve brought together thousands of volunteers and millions of supporters to win protections for food, water, and climate. That includes banning fracking in New York, Maryland, and California and stopping numerous dirty power plants, pipelines, and other fossil fuel projects. 

Together, we’ve also passed restrictions on factory farms in Oregon and Maryland, blocked water privatization attempts in over three dozen jurisdictions, and so much more. Our community and our wins will continue to grow in the coming years.

Our strategic plan lays out how we’ll expand on all this progress. Here are our main campaign focuses and goals:

1. Public Water for All 

Millions lack access to clean and affordable water, and this problem will grow if we don’t act. Climate change-fueled disasters are further overwhelming our deteriorating water infrastructure. 

We will continue taking on the worst water abusers and polluters — Big Ag and the fossil fuel industry — and working to secure permanent federal investment in water infrastructure. Moreover, we’ll stop water privatization schemes to profit off this precious public resource. In years ahead, we’re working to:

• Force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to monitor for microplastics in our drinking water.
• Resist bad federal legislation and regulatory rollbacks of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act to defend against PFAS, lead, and water privatization.
• Fight to preserve funding for clean water by building support for the WATER Act and the PFAS Action Act.
• Stop water and sewer privatizations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland, support equitable state water funding, and prevent people from losing their homes over water bills in Maryland. 

2. Ban Factory Farms

The factory farm system has devastated our air, water, rural communities, local economies, and the climate. We need to ban factory farms, including factory farm gas.

Rising food prices have emphasized the stranglehold Big Ag corporations have on our food system. From seeds to the grocery aisle, these food barons are making our food more expensive, less safe, and less sustainable. We’ll rein them in, protect our food, and build a fair food system as we:

• Resist the Musk-Trump administration’s policies of deregulation and mergers that benefit large corporations at the expense of everyday people.
• Build majority support in Congress for the Farm System Reform Act and the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium Act. These bills would end factory farming and tackle agribusiness concentration, respectively. 
• Pass moratoriums, bans, or meaningful regulatory reform bills to stop factory farms in Oregon, New York, New Mexico, and Iowa.

3. End Fossil Fuels

With recent wildfires, hurricanes, and other climate disasters, the stakes of stopping climate pollution have never been higher. Moreover, build outs of fossil fuel infrastructure threaten to further sicken frontline environmental justice communities. Yet, the fossil fuel industry is blocking a transition to a clean energy future. 

We will work to stop fossil fuel production and use, reject industry scams to push more drilling and burning, and drive a faster clean energy revolution. The future of our planet depends on nothing less. To accomplish these, we’re focusing on:

• Resisting efforts by the Musk-Trump administration to expand fossil fuel production and infrastructure in Congress and the courts.
• Developing a broad coalition in Congress to end fossil fuel subsidies (including those for carbon capture, factory farm biogas, and hydrogen) and exports.
• Passing state Climate Superfund legislation in California, New Jersey, and beyond to make polluters pay for the damage they’ve done and move us off fossil fuels. 

Alongside these three main campaigns, we’ll continue fighting plastic production and pollution, particularly microplastics. Fracking is fueling the plastics boom, while plastic pollution impacts our water, oceans, air, and food. Ending plastic production and pollution is key for protecting our food, water, and climate.

Our Goals Are Ambitious — and Achievable

Food & Water Watch recognizes the scope of what we must achieve and the powerful forces we’re up against. We also recognize that when it comes to our food, water, and climate, there is no success in half measures. 

For two decades, we have battled corporate power with smart strategy and relentless determination. Our track record proves our approach is effective, and we’re on the right side of the issues. 

Our new strategic plan serves as a guidepost for the next four years, as we build on our approach, expand our power, and protect our health and environment from corporate greed. With your support, we’ll create a livable future for all people and generations to come.