MAHA Farms and Ranches:
Private Property Solution to Make America Healthy Again
Table of Contents
The MAHA Executive Order
Economy on the Ground
Natural Resources + Culture = Economy
What the Private Landowner Does
What Government Does
MAHA Standards of Education
What the President’s Commission Provides
If You Own a Farm or Ranch
MAHA Farm and Ranch Requirements
The MAHA Kitchen
A Note on Urban MAHA Gardens
What Snake River Music Gardens Offers
Our MAHA Qualifications
To Summarize
MAHA Farm and Ranch Book List
The Full Executive Order
The MAHA Executive Order
On February 13, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order establishing the President’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission. MAHA focuses especially on America’s childhood chronic disease crisis, establishing MOCHA, Make Our Children Healthy Again.
Notably for the private sector, the executive order calls for (1) fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, and healthy lifestyles; (2) research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick; (3) agencies to work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world; (4) insurers to provide benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.
The order calls for a MAHA Commission to make government-wide recommendations on policy and strategy to address contributing causes and end the childhood chronic disease crisis.
MAHA Farms and Ranches education program meets these requirements by (1) respecting the farmer’s and rancher’s natural tendency to educate upcoming generations for survival on the land; (2) harnessing the need of young people for meaningful occupations and real community.
The farmer/rancher wears many hats: father, scientist, reader, thinker, planner, do-er, manager, businessman, and teacher. He teaches the young because he must; how else to tend his acres and herds and pass on his thriving farm to the next generation?
Economy On the Ground
Snake River Music Gardens offers a comprehensive rural economic formula with incentives for private property owners to educate young people on the ground to make America healthy again by restoring America’s natural resource-based family farm, ranch, and cottage industry economy.
Family farmers and ranchers have always been the muscles of the strong right arm of the American constitutional republic. The sinews of the strong right arm are miners producing metals for agricultural tools and foresters producing wood for tools, fencing and structures. To Make America Healthy Again, restore America’s family farming, ranching, mining, fishing, and timber economy.
End deaths of despair: build hope in our young by offering prospects in America’s real natural resource-based economy.
What is economy? In essence, thrifty use of resources.
American Heritage dictionary defines economy as 1. the careful or thrifty use of resources, as of income, materials, or labor. 2. A saving. 3. The management of the resources of a country, community, or business: the American economy. 4.a. A system for the management and development of resources: an agricultural economy. b. The economic system of a country or area: “the milch cow is the center round which this economy revolves.” (Conrad M. Arensberg). 5. The functional arrangement of elements within a structure or system: the economy of an organism. 6. Theology. The divine plan or system for the government of the world. 7. Theology. Divine dispensation, especially for a specific period or nation.
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Even more universal than these definitions is the root of the word: Greek oikonomia, from oikonomos, manager of a household: oikos, house. Home is the center of economy.
The family household on its land is and always will be the root of human economy. The productive householder, his thrifty wife, and their diligent children/apprentices manage land and resources to produce the needs of community and nation.
On this ancient truth rests our comprehensive rural economic formula to make America healthy again by educating young people on farms and ranches. What could incentivize America’s hardworking farmers and ranchers to share their knowledge with upcoming generations of farmers?
(1) Qualified, respectful young volunteers who sincerely want to farm. (2) No taxes. (3) Land is permanently protected from closure, alienation, or destruction of its water systems.
Photo: With proper watershed management, even on these high desert Eastern Oregon grazing lands, ranchers and farmers can produce crops, raise healthy animal herds, and support healthy wildlife.
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Natural resources + Culture = Economy
What are natural resources? Natural resources exist on the planet independent of human activities: sunlight, water, air, rocks and minerals, land, soil, forests. Natural resources are free and are the source and basis of all economy. Natural resources are governed by nature = God’s law.
Human activities (culture) build economy from natural resources. The foundation of human agricultural economy is watershed management. Water is essential to life. Water + land = life = culture.
Culture includes crops and animals wild and domestic on family lands, family kitchens, family enterprises, local education, local music, carpentry and fiber arts. Cultures are also microbial: arising from the soil biome are fermentation cultures managed in kitchen and cellar, such as cheese, beer, wine, sauerkraut, sourdough & vinegar. Culture includes the spiritual life of the people; a vigorous spiritual life eventuates in healthy strong families and abundant economy.
Photo: An example of culture: from plum fruit to plum jam.
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What the Private Landowner Does
The economic function of the farmer, his family, and his community is: do the work and train the young to populate the 500+ occupations of the natural resource-based economy. Farming is America’s quintessential private enterprise, building family businesses from generation to generation. Farm families naturally reinvest this year’s profits into next year’s projects and improvements. Each farm supports 30 more jobs in the wider economy, so prosperity grows as more ranches and farms are established and thus more people work.
As America recovers from decades of kleptocracy, it makes sense for America to encourage private property and private enterprise to begin to restore the 50,000,000 family farms America had before World War II, before the cruel “get big or get out” campaign drove dedicated American farm and ranch families off the land. Family farms and ranches were the foundation of our national health & wealth.
Land is the means of health and the source of all wealth.
Since land is the means of health, MAHA can and should provide land for families who want to farm or ranch. Western America is 50% federal lands, many of those lands congressionally mandated to be distributed to the people. In addition to land, MAHA education aims to make sure every young farmer and rancher has the strategic information and guidance his family needs to succeed on the land.
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What Government Does
Congress should enact a MAHA Homestead Act to put rural lands into the hands of qualified families and individuals. MAHA education will qualify individuals and families from (1) farm and ranch families who have stewarded land for generations, and (2) urban families and individuals willing to train to work on the land.
In dry western states, wise watershed management has been working for decades to increase the quantity of water available for grazing and crops. (California flouted wise watershed management policies, with disastrous firestorm results.) Private landowners need stable government forest policies (1) for long-range planning for water quantity and (2) so that evolved MAHA homesteads, farms and ranches will never be sold or destroyed or alienated from permanent cultivation.
To maximize water quantity for agriculture, restore America’s natural resource-based economy, improve public health and guard public safety, the government should (1) designate rural opportunity zones in well- managed watersheds, (2) use opportunity zones to encourage MAHA Farms and Ranches in green belts around cities, (3) coordinate youth crews to fire-wise residential lands in and around urban areas, and (4) coordinate youth crews to reduce fuels in mountain forests that yield water for agriculture, urban life, and industry.
To make sure young farm families can make a living, local governments should clear the way for farmer’s markets with
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vendor booths, music stages, picnic table areas (eat, drink, sing), farm trucks on the outside, safe family culture within.
The farmer’s market is the best incubator for fledgling small businesses. The best way to fine tune your ventures for success is to offer your wares and services to the public.
To promote agri-tourism and rural tourism, encourage festivals, fairs and rodeos celebrating regional cuisine and culture.
Photo: The annual rodeo in Halfway, Oregon
To give farmers and ranchers sources of income beyond food, government should designate fibersheds. A fibershed is a hub with a 300-mile radius where wool, cotton, hemp, flax, nettle, linen, & specialty fibers (llama) are grown, processed, & spun.
Government should encourage investment in fibershed infrastructure and help source fiber processing equipment like hemp decorticators. Once the fiber is spun, crafters weave and knit fibers into garments. The aim is not mass production but extra income for farmers and ranchers, to develop quality fiber arts in home, farm, ranch and workshop quantities, and, ultimately, a thriving regional fashion scene.
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MAHA Standards of Education
MAHA education is hands-on skills education through family life, farm and ranch residencies, summer education camps (including church camps and family camps) and workshops to accomplish projects and teach skills.
America used to have many more farm, music, sports and arts camps where youth and families could experience healthy happy productive outdoor life and learn rural values & culture. Church and farm camps in the 1900’s historically functioned to bring millions of immigrants out of America’s cities into healthy rural and small-town life. Youth began as campers, trained in their teens and twenties to serve as camp counselors, and progressed into productive adulthood. To restore America’s camp culture, insurance companies must cease to stifle educational farm activities.
MAHA education is team education. MAHA education teaches young people to grow and process healthy food and fiber in teams and clubs. “Many hands make light the work.”
MAHA education is ethical education. Youth learn gratitude, the value of one’s work and the work of others, the meaning of one’s contribution to community, and the purpose of one’s life in a practical and a spiritual sense.
MAHA hands on education is supplemented by reading, discussing, and putting into daily practice the principles learned from books of proven value to farmers, ranchers, gardeners, and families: the MAHA Book List (see below).
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Youth of any age may study the MAHA Farm & Ranch Book List, participate in discussions, serve a residency, and qualify to own and operate a MAHA Farm or Ranch.
MAHA education will coordinate MOCHA youth on-ranch and off-ranch with (1) local schools (2) church youth groups, (3) local families and youth clubs doing 4H, Future Farmers of America and Grange projects coordinated with state land-grant college extension offices. Concise booklets and handbooks, with photos and links, and live events will convey the Make Our Children Healthy Again (MOCHA) ethic.
MAHA education will coordinate with permaculture design courses such as (1) Andrew Millison’s course at Oregon State University; (2) Geoff Lawton’s drylands projects (see Lawton’s Greening the Desert video); (3) Allan Savory’s work on the essential role of hoofed animals to restore pasture lands.
Graduates of permaculture design courses will be encouraged to serve residencies at MAHA Ranches or Farms, building water, garden, compost and livestock infrastructure projects and teaching principles of permaculture to youth. Using permaculture and watershed management principles, the entire western US could become green and fertile; see Andrew Millison’s series of videos on Africa’s Great Green Wall, for example:
MAHA education will guide youth (18-35), adults (35-55) and elders to choose from 100’s of cottage industry occupations, to produce products and offer services for the expanding farm/ ranch/rural/farmers market economy. There are 500+ hands-on natural resource-based occupations in this economy!
Many people have commented that today’s young people don’t want to do anything. As educators, we, the authors, have no problem interesting young people in hands-on occupations. Young people crave hands-on work. Just get young people on the land, remove their cell phones, put tools and materials in their hands, and show them the moves. After 1% of America’s youth discover MAHA Farms and Ranches, develop skills in the hands-on economy, and become free, prosperous, and successful, many more will follow.
MAHA will educate urban consumers about health online and at MAHA/MOCHA education booths at farmer’s markets. MAHA urban gardens will aid urban education.
Farms and ranches will develop agri-tourism features (farm stands, nurseries, you-pick crops, music camps, arts camps, fiber arts camps, horse camps) so urban folks can experience the conviviality, beauty, and health of farm and ranch life.
In each fibershed, MAHA will train youth teams to grow fiber, process, and spin fibers into threads and yarns. After spinning, fiber artists can knit or weave fibers into regional fashions. MAHA will incentivize investment in fiber-processing infrastructure like hemp decorticators, spinning jennies, spinning wheels, looms, and leather tanneries.
MAHA will provide practical training for much needed youth teams in forest stewardship, timber and firewood harvesting, fuels reduction forestry, fire ecology, forest fungi, and engine maintenance. Restore American male self-esteem by offering
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the diligent youth a way to secure himself a useful role in America’s expanding rural economy. This program will bolster America’s defense by providing a pool of healthy youth teams with good work habits.
The MAHA Ranch & Farm formula will replicate by training MAHA trainers at MAHA ranches and farms, drawing educators and trainers from (1) elder ranchers, farmers and gardeners passing on experience, (2) veterans with valuable skills, (3) youth who qualify to own and operate a MAHA farm/ranch, and (4) permaculture design course graduates.
The MAHA Ranch/Farm formula will be documented in photo, video and written word to build a library of educational practical materials like this photo of beets grown in leaf mulch.
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What the President’s MAHA Commission Provides
Constitutionally protect food sovereignty. Extend to farms and ranches explicit constitutional protection from local and state agencies who overreach beyond the law into non-statutory and unconstitutional regulation to close, control, tax, regulate, bankrupt, and steal farms and ranches.
Constitutionally exempt MAHA farms and ranches from regulation. Government has no jurisdiction until the product enters commerce, so farmers and ranchers may build and operate bunkhouses, chow wagons, trainee housing, barns, workshops, B&B’s, roadside farmstands, church or family camps, home schools, farm dining, greenhouses, nurseries, composting operations, rainwater harvesting set-ups, dairies, cheese- making facilities, and any other educational or production facility the rancher or farmer deems necessary.
We ask President Trump as Dealmaker in Chief to make a deal with America’s insurance companies to incentivize health-promoting nutrition (Eat Genuine Foods!) and healthy outdoor life. Currently farmers and ranchers cannot obtain insurance for educational and entrepreneurial activities. Set up a comprehensive public safety insurance deal that relies on proper watershed management, fields youth teams to reduce forest fuels, fire-wises all MAHA farm and ranch land, rewards personal progress towards health, and covers farm, ranch or forest injuries.
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We ask President Trump to make deals with McDonald’s, Taco Time and other processed food corporations to purchase increasing amounts of healthy (non-GMO) American farm and ranch raised pastured livestock, potatoes, onions, wheat, tomatoes for ketchup, eggs and healthy oils for mayonnaise, corn for chips, etc. Turn fast food into healthy food, strengthen immune systems, reduce obesity, lower cancer and diabetes rates. Provide domestic markets for our basic food crops.
Designation as a MAHA Ranch or Farm. Includes an online listing and a roadside sign. For the MAHA Farms and Ranches website, use WWOOFusa.org as a model of how farms and gardens may safely attract & qualify applicants for residencies.
Photo: A cattle and pig ranch in Eastern Oregon. Photo Cheri Siebler
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If You Own a Farm or Ranch
In discussions with local (Eastern Oregon) ranchers and farmers about serving as a MAHA Ranch or Farm, we discovered that ranchers want to know: (1) what are the steps to become a MAHA ranch? (2) how does the ranch benefit from constitutional protection? (3) what are the tax consequences of serving as a MAHA ranch or farm? (4) How does an elder MAHA rancher continue to make a living? (5) How do applicants qualify for a MAHA residency?
The first step to become a MAHA Farm or Ranch is to execute required MAHA Farm or Ranch documents.
Document one is a signed Letter of Intent between landowner and MAHA educators expressing the true desires of the parties for that land.
Document two is a signed Land Agreement, by which the land becomes a Make America Healthy Again Farm or Ranch. Either (1) the MAHA farm or ranch continues to be owned by the landowner to be passed on to his family, or (2) the farm or ranch is donated to a MAHA educational non- profit, with the landowner retaining a lifetime estate.
In turn, designated MAHA educators receive their lifetime estates in the property and designate to whom the land will pass to preserve in perpetuity the MAHA educational and cultural functions of the property.
Document three, the MAHA educators do a Permaculture Page 14
Design Plan for the property with topographic maps and overlays. The Permaculture Design Plan guides development of the land and coordinates with watershed management.
MAHA Farms Are Constitutionally Protected
America’s Founding Fathers were farmers who wrote the US Constitution to institute self-governance for a nation of farmers. 95% of early Americans were independent farmers. The farmer’s work was and is the foundation of America’s economy. Today, self-governing American citizens possess an inherent, unalienable, and fundamental right to farm, based in:
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, which declares that governments are instituted to secure peoples’ rights, and that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed; and in
The Original Constitution of these united States of America, prior to 1871, guaranteeing the right to the pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness. Farming is life!
Under broad constitutional principles the MAHA farmer or rancher is protected as a sovereign citizen. By the use of his private property, the sovereign producer ensures domestic tranquility and promotes the general welfare by making sure the population has water, food, drink, fuel, and fiber.
Food sovereignty, the right of the people to engage in agriculture without interference, is lawful under God’s law, natural law, and constitutional law—that is, man’s law.
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Enjoying the inherent constitutionality of farming, the ranch or farm with a MAHA designation will also be protected from regulators by a document of presidential designation.
Tax Consequences of Being a MAHA Farm or Ranch
If the property is owned by an educational non-profit with a lifetime estate vested in the farmer/rancher/educator, a MAHA Farm or Ranch pays no federal tax, in recognition that the education and public health services provided by a MAHA Farm or Ranch lessen the burden of government.
If the property continues under private ownership, provided the federal government declares rural opportunity zones like the urban opportunity zones effected from 2017 to 2021, self-employed entrepreneurs in opportunity zones, including farmers and ranchers, will pay no federal income tax.
Income for the Elder Rancher/Farmer
Farm and ranch residencies provide a way for the rancher/ farmer to get help to accomplish projects, raise animals and crops, and keep income flowing to the farm. The farmer/ rancher passes to the resident his wisdom and knowledge, trains the resident in hands-on skills to develop occupations, and in turn receives respect and help about the place.
To qualify as a MAHA farmer or rancher, urbanites and academics volunteer an intensive four-season 1-year residency on a MAHA farm or ranch, working the land and discussing the MAHA Book List. Projects could include water system,
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fencing, gardens, livestock, food processing, field crops, workshop, science lab, library, composting yard, and other optional projects such as a dairy, fermentation station, and fiber arts shed. “Get ‘er done!”
Successful residencies will depend on matching ranchers/ farmers with carefully qualified residents. Because many of today’s farmers and ranchers are elders, there is a generation gap to consider. Together, rancher and resident will develop income streams by offering products and services.
The protocol for vetting (qualifying) applicants for residency begins by asking the applicant 20-25 questions including: What are the rules and principles by which you guide your life? What are your ethics? Who taught you your ethics? What useful tasks can you do with your hands? Are you diligent? Does your family have a history in agriculture? Why do you want to learn agriculture/ranching? What plants and/or animals have you raised? What are the staple foods of your current diet? Have you visited/worked on/lived at a ranch or farm? What services do you provide for your community and who are your community? Have you studied science/measured scientific data; specifically what kind of data? What entrepreneurial occupations attract you? How do you handle disagreement and/or conflict? What watershed do you inhabit? Are you familiar with any of the books of the MAHA Book list? What is your preferred reading material?
By answering these and further questions, applicants and MAHA educators can engage in genuine discussions that will reveal personality and the likelihood of a successful residency.
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Before the applicant is invited to serve a residency, references (including parents, employers and teachers) are interviewed.
It is crucial for harmony to exist between the rancher/ farmer/ trainer and the resident(s). The MAHA residency agreement will include a one-month trial period. In case of disharmony, the resident may leave or be asked to leave after a month.
Applicants accepted for a residency will volunteer at least one year to this work, as we, Arthur and Lindianne, volunteer all our years.
Resident housing could include spare bedrooms in the farmhouse, or garden cottages built by residents. Over the years cottages evolve paths, water harvesting from rooftops, fire pit, BBQ, herb and vegetable garden, fruit vines, kindling and firewood area, composting area, and work shed.
To applicants for residencies: the MAHA residency will transform your life! You will emerge with the priceless jewel of your own health, connected to a watershed, a local economy, a community, a farm or ranch, and a spiritual community. Budding entrepreneurs will have developed occupations & acquired tools.
After your residency, residents may progress to own, develop and operate your own MAHA Ranch or Farm, to pass on the wisdom passed to you, and so on, until America is healthy.
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MAHA Farm and Ranch requirements:
Maintain a library of books essential to MAHA (see MAHA Farm and Ranch Book List).
House and train MAHA residents for their one-year residencies, according to a MAHA residency signed agreement. If landowner and resident desire and agree, the residency may be extended.
Execute documents lawfully passing the MAHA ranch to the next MAHA- qualified generation.
To fulfill the executive order’s call for research, each MAHA Farm or Ranch must have its own MAHA science lab/clinic, greenhouse, composting yard, kitchen, and gardens. Beyond
why people are getting sick, MAHA Farms and Ranches will document how people recover from ill-health brought on by a diet of genetically modified foods saturated in high-fructose corn syrup and GM seed oils. The MAHA science lab will document the health of soil, residents, animals, and plants.
For a science lab, microscopes are necessary, both (1) less than 60x magnification rock scopes for soil samples, crystalline structure, rock identification, and mineral content, and (2) greater than 100x magnification with slides to study cellular and water samples, identify bacteria, fungi, spores, and other microbial life.
In the lab/clinic, residents will measure and record their own progress towards health, observe microscopic life in the ranch/farm biome, analyze soil for mineral and microbial content, and observe and document human, plant, livestock, bird, microbe, insect and worm health.
Residents will eat only genuine foods. We farmers and farmwives already grow and process as much of our food as possible. We tend our chosen fermentation cultures—for example, sourdough, wine, cheese, sauerkraut, kombucha, kimchi, and vinegar.
The MAHA farm or ranch wife will hostess a fiber arts circle to encourage womanly arts by convivially processing and recycling genuine American- grown fibers (flax, linen, cotton, wool, hemp, angora) into comfortable, durable, practical
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garments. A fiber arts circle trains residents and community members to process, sew, spin, knit, crochet, weave, and repair. Depending on individual talents, a fiber arts circle may, for example, knit thick work socks, make quality linen garments, or quilt blankets. Talented individuals may design and produce regional fashions (work wear & celebration garb) to market at farmers markets and stores in town. Fashion design develops modesty and good taste in girls under MAHA protection.
Photo: Christmas shawl from recycled materials
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The MAHA Kitchen
The heart of the farm or ranch is the kitchen, where ranchers and visitors gather convivially for food and warmth. In the kitchen you may find Mom cooking and baking, youth doing home-school assignments, residents stopping in for a cup of coffee and a muffin, a five-gallon bucket of fruit waiting to be processed, loaves of bread rising, Dad and residents discussing a permaculture map open on the kitchen table, everyone on the ranch gathered for a blessing and a meal.
When they shared a recipe, my Italian aunts and grannies said, “The most important ingredient is love.” Yes, the farmwife’s work is endless! Accomplished in love, not in anger, our work is our service, our joy, our family’s and community’s survival, the training and education of our youth, our hope for the future! The farmwife knows she is needed; her work earns her a secure place in family and community. Everything she does is infused with love, as is the work of the farmer/rancher.
The farmer/rancher gives love by raising cattle and chickens, mending and using tools, maintaining fences and engines, designing, building, getting firewood, tending the forest, pruning the orchard. Without his work, there is no kitchen.
Farmer and farmwife, rancher and ranch wife, partnership with each other and unity with God is the foundation of the farm or ranch. MAHA success is defined (1) by the number of souls uplifted, trained, and spiritualized to become diligent on the land, abjure anger, and live in loving harmony; and (2) passing on a functional farm or ranch to future generations.
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A Note on Urban MAHA Gardens
A MAHA designation as urban teaching garden may be given to urban gardeners and permaculturists who operate kitchen garden, agricultural science lab, compost yard, and greenhouse, train youth, maintain a MAHA library, and conduct discussions and workshops. To extend the educational reach of the urban MAHA garden, residencies may be extended to trainees living in the neighborhood of the urban teaching garden.
Photo: Squash vine growing in urban teaching garden.
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What Snake River Music Gardens Offers
Snake River Music Gardens is a non-partisan, non-denominational educational non-profit domiciled in the State of Oregon. We educate in two watersheds: Snake River and Lake Victoria/Nile River in Uganda. Snake River Music Gardens offers to operate a MAHA Music Ranch and pioneer a western high desert MAHA Ranch. We and our stalwart trainees will build and operate ranch water system, gardens, kitchen and pantry, root cellar, poultry house, barn, greenhouse, compost yard, dairy, library, fiber arts studio, music studio, carpenter/ luthier shop, science lab, and beekeeping shed.
The process of sourcing, building and integrating these structures and systems will model the time needed (in years) to develop a fully functioning permaculture homestead. Homesteads do not spring into being overnight. There is a logical order to develop a homestead; first, get your water.
We will write and publish initial editions of booklets and handbooks like this aimed to attract young people to work with their hands. (Government investment would be appropriate for larger printings for wide distribution.)
Since we are musicians, our MAHA Ranch will be a MAHA Music Ranch. At the end of a working day, music lifts spirits and puts smiles on faces. Around hearth and table, songs are sung, stories are told, ventures are planned, finished projects admired. At our MAHA Music Ranch, we shall operate luthier, flute-making and drum-making workshops and train youth to build and repair musical instruments as well as play together.
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Snake River Music Gardens will format MAHA ranch & farm applications. (Snake River Music Gardens already formats and receives food forest land applications from our Ugandan correspondents.) We will receive and process initial applications; as the program stabilizes and scales up, we recommend that MAHA offices be established in each county or region to receive and process applications.
Snake River Music Gardens will model and document the process of vetting applicants for farm and ranch residencies. We will also model the process of evaluating the success (or failure) of residencies and evaluating each resident’s mastery of the principles of permaculture and successful homesteading.
Snake River Music Gardens will model and document the process of evaluating the progress and success of MAHA Farms and Ranches.
Photo: cattle browsing through a well-managed forest in Eastern Oregon.
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Our MAHA Qualifications
Eldest daughter of famed back pain doctor John E. Sarno, MD, at 72 years Lindianne and her husband Arthur at 74 enjoy perfect health through: bicycling, gardening, healing pain by understanding what causes pain, natural foods, herbal medicine, rich garden soil, mineralized home grown vegetables and fruits, local meat, eggs, and dairy, and community culture. We are living proof of the power of the human immune system.
We know from personal experience to avoid factory-processed foods laden with genetically modified corn/soy, glyphosate-drenched wheat, and high-fructose corn syrup. We cook our food from local ingredients. In our 70’s we are in better health than many Americans decades younger. Nothing hurts, everything works.
Born in Manhattan to a musical Italian family, Lindianne studied history at Princeton, yearned for independent rural economy, learned to garden and cook pioneer style in rural Oregon, studied drylands permaculture in Tucson, Arizona, and WWOOFed a homestead in Homer, Alaska. A WWOOF Host Farm (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) qualifies and hosts young WWOOFers to accomplish homestead projects. Many WWOOFers are migrants from city to country.
Born in Albany, Oregon, Arthur Sappington served in the US Coast Guard, studied at the Berkeley College of Natural Resources, did a soil guide for Oregon, worked for Bohemia Lumber Company until the spotted owl misconception closed America’s western timber industry, then went on the land in
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Baker County, Oregon to mine and ranch.
Arthur manages watersheds, fire crews, wildlife, buffalo, horses, bees, beavers, birds and biomes. He tends forests, prunes orchards, terraces gardens, maintains uplands full of water-conserving beaver. He teaches watershed management design to green the deserts and caretake the forests, uplands and valleys of the western US.
Retired now, Arthur spends his days researching, writing, documenting, and speaking on the law and science of natural resources. Law is the foundation of our work. Food sovereignty, the right of the people to do agriculture without interference, is lawful under God’s law, natural law, and constitutional law—that is, man’s law.
Photo: The Sappingtons, 2025 (photo Billy Olechno)
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To Summarize...
Lindianne and Arthur Sappington offer the MAHA Ranch & Farm formula to the American people and to the Trump administration from America’s private sector so we may begin to restore the family farm economy that made America healthy for three centuries.
Restoring America’s 50,000,000 farms is an ambitious goal, so we had best get started now. American today still has about 1,000,000 farms. This is a sufficient foundation to build upon.
We are grateful for the work of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. bringing America’s health crisis into the public dialogue and leading the movement. We are grateful for President Trump’s far-seeing executive order, printed in full below.
To ask questions, make suggestions, or contribute ideas, contact us through Snake River Music Gardens website, www.snakerivermusicgardens.org.
We are especially interested to hear from farmers, ranchers, and diligent young people who want to work with their hands on the ground to build themselves a secure place in the natural resource-based economy.
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MAHA Farm and Ranch Book List
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery
PERMACULTURE: A Designers’ Manual, by Bill Mollison
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond; Volume 1, Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life and Landscape, by Brad Lancaster
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
1491, by Charles C. Mann
Social Justice Fallacies, by Thomas Sowell
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver
The Truth about Genetically Modified Foods (pamphlet), by Lindianne Sappington
Where There Is No Doctor (Donde No Hay Doctor)
Farmers of Forty Centuries, by F.H. King
The Humanure Handbook, by Joe Jenkins Fibershed, by Rebecca Burgess
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The Full Executive Order ESTABLISHING THE PRESIDENT’S
MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN COMMISSION
EXECUTIVE ORDER February 13, 2025
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries, with pre-COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years. This equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for the United States population. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness.
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These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe. Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate. Further, from 1990-2021, the United States experienced an 88 percent increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated. In 2021, asthma was more than twice as common in the United States than most of Europe, Asia, or
Africa. Autism spectrum disorders had the highest prevalence in high- income countries, including the United States, in 2021. Similarly, autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis are more commonly diagnosed in high-income areas such as Europe and North America. Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action.
This concern applies urgently to America’s children. In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease. Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s. Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese.
These health burdens have continued to increase alongside the increased prescription of medication. For example, in the case of Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, over 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder — up from 3.2 million children in 2019-2020 — and the number of children being diagnosed with the condition continues to rise.
This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of
life. Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores. Ninety percent of the Nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures is for people with chronic and mental health conditions. In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively. These trends harm us, our economy, and our security.
To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must re-direct our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease. This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety. We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data. We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.
Sec. 2. Policy. It shall be the policy of the Federal Government to aggressively combat the critical health challenges facing our citizens, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. To do so, executive departments and agencies (agencies) that address health or healthcare must focus on reversing chronic disease. Under this policy:
(a) all federally funded health research should empower Americans through transparency and open-source data, and should avoid or eliminate conflicts of interest that skew outcomes and perpetuate distrust;
(b) the National Institutes of Health and other health-related research funded by the Federal Government should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick;
(c) agencies shall work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world; and
(d) agencies shall ensure the availability of expanded treatment options and the flexibility for health insurance coverage to provide benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.
Sec. 3. Establishment and Composition of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission. (a) There is hereby established the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (Commission), chaired by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Chair), with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy serving as Executive Director (Executive Director).
(b) In addition to the Chair and the Executive Director, the Commission shall include the following officials, or their designees:
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)
the Secretary of Agriculture;
the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; the Secretary of Education;
the Secretary of Veterans Affairs;
the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; the Director of the Office of Management and Budget;
(vii) the Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy; (viii) the Director of the National Economic Council;
(ix) the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers;
(x) the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy;
(xi) the Commissioner of Food and Drugs;
(xii) the Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
(xiii) the Director of the National Institutes of Health; and
(xiv) other members of my Administration invited to participate, at the discretion of the Chair and the Executive Director.
Sec. 4. Fighting Childhood Chronic Disease. The initial mission of the Commission shall be to advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease
crisis. Therefore, the Commission shall:
(a) study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism;
(b) advise and assist the President on informing the American people regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, using transparent and clear facts; and
(c) provide to the President Government-wide recommendations on policy and strategy related to addressing the identified contributing causes of and ending the childhood chronic disease crisis.
Sec. 5. Initial Assessment and Strategy from the Make America Healthy Again Commission. (a) Make our Children Healthy Again
Assessment. Within 100 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, which shall:
(i) identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries;
(ii) assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons;
(iii) assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;
(iv) identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles;
(v) evaluate the effectiveness of existing educational programs with regard to nutrition, physical activity, and mental health for children;
(vi) identify and evaluate existing Federal programs and funding intended to prevent and treat childhood health issues for their scope and effectiveness;
(vii) ensure transparency of all current data and unpublished analyses related to the childhood chronic disease crisis, consistent with applicable law;
(viii) evaluate the effectiveness of current Federal Government childhood health data and metrics, including those from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics and the National Survey of Children’s Health;
(ix) restore the integrity of science, including by eliminating undue industry influence, releasing findings and underlying data to the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, and increasing methodological rigor; and
(x) establish a framework for transparency and ethics review in industry-funded projects.
(b) Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy. Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, a Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy (Strategy), based on the findings from the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment described in subsection (a) of this section. The Strategy shall address appropriately restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including by ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis or unsuccessfully attempt to address it, and by adding powerful new solutions that will end childhood chronic disease.
(c) The Chair may hold public hearings, meetings, roundtables, and similar events, as appropriate, and may receive expert input from leaders in public health and Government accountability.
Sec. 6. Additional Reports. (a) Following the submission to the President of the Strategy, and any final strategy reports thereafter, the Chair and the Executive Director shall recommend to the President updates to the Commission’s mission, including desired reports.
(b) The Commission shall not reconvene, following submission of the Strategy, until an updated mission is submitted to the President through the Executive Director.
Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
THE WHITE HOUSE, February 13, 2025.