Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says rural America is facing a "major, major crisis" and will roll out a major policy plan in Iowa to combat it.

"That's a fact and somebody's got to recognize that," the presidential candidate said Friday in an interview with the Des Moines Register. "And if we don't recognize it and we let this crisis continue, what we'll see is more and more depopulation of rural counties."

Sanders, who will campaign across Northwest Iowa Saturday and Sunday, is set to deliver a speech about agricultural policy Sunday morning in the swine barn of the Mitchell County Fairgrounds in Osage.

Laying out his vision Friday, the senator said the rural way of life needs to be preserved both in his home state of Vermont and across Iowa. To do that, he will call for major, structural changes to the agricultural economy.

To start, he wants more active anti-trust enforcement of the major agricultural companies.

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"At the heart of rural America is agriculture," he said. "And we have got to make a decision as to whether or not we are comfortable with seeing fewer and fewer large agribusiness industries control commodity after commodity. And I am not happy with that."

Sanders wants to see the government split up large agribusinesses and undo recent mergers.

The senator lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses by less than half a percentage point. While much of his 2016 bid focused on breaking up big banks, raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy and providing free college and healthcare for all, he has expanded his aim this year, focusing more on agriculture and rural decline on the stump.

"I come from a rural state," Sanders told the Register. "It's an issue we probably should have talked about more last time. We will do that this time."

During his first Iowa trip in early March, he targeted "factory farming" and derided the concentration of players from the corn seed market to pork production. Sunday, he plans to expand on those issues and also talk about agriculture's connection to water quality and global climate change.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, often seen as competing for the same slice of liberal voters as Sanders, released her own agricultural policy in late March. She specifically called for federal regulators to break up Tyson, Dow-DuPont and Bayer-Monsanto — some of the key players in Iowa's ag economy.

Asked whether the nation could realistically move back to a system of smaller, family farms, Sanders said: "I don't think we're going to go back to the 1880s."

But he said Americans must push for major changes to the entire food production system.

While he will call for major changes in ag policy, Sanders says his rural vision goes wider than just farms and fields.

He said it's "beyond comprehension" that many rural areas lack adequate and affordable broadband and cellular service. Given the prevalence of technology today, he said rural communities are increasingly poised to recruit small businesses.

"But if they're going to come or people in rural America are going to stay in rural America they need decent schools for their kids," Sanders said, "they need access to healthcare and they need an infrastructure that works."