Advocacy Corner: Senate Passes Farm Bill -- so now what?

After weeks of debate, the United States Senate has passed a Farm Bill – or “Food & Farm Bill,” as many believe it should be called. First enacted over 80 years ago as a New Deal program to aid struggling farmers and feed hungry Americans, the Farm Bill has since evolved into our nation's most influential piece of food and farming legislation. It sets and enforces the rules on what we eat, how much it costs, and under what conditions it is grown. The Senate's Bill, which passed yesterday, boasts $23 billion in deficit reduction as it blueprints our food system over the next five years. Let's take a closer look.

People of the Seattle Community Farm

There is cause to celebrate, and this is largely thanks to the efforts of grassroots organizing and lobbying. The legislation eliminates direct payments to commodity farmers, which have been a blunt tool that overfund industrial, monocrop agriculture and disproportionately benefit the largest farms. Instead, there will be greater emphasis on need-based crop insurance, including more support for organic farms. Important to WA growers are increased Specialty Crop Block Grants – industry jargon meaning more money for fruits and veggies. The Senate voted to double funding for Community Food Project grants, which levy federal money for community-level food system development and currently support Lettuce Link's Seattle Community Farm.

A new local fruit and vegetable program called the Hunger-Free Community Incentive Grants offers $100 million over five years to increase purchases by SNAP (food stamp) customers at farmers markets and other healthy food retailers. Another program would introduce a five-state Farm-to-School pilot project. Summarily, the Senate's smorgasbord provides more support for rural economies, urban eaters’ access to healthy food, and equitable agricultural subsidies – all amidst a climate of funding cuts.

But there is also reason to grieve, as the Senate Bill made significant chops to the SNAP program. It is deeply troubling to see $4.5 billion in cuts to SNAP at a time when 46 million Americans are enrolled in this program, which is one of the few federal safety nets that expands and contracts based on need. According to the Community Food Security Coalition, these cuts will reduce benefits to approximately half a million food insecure families by $90 a month. Also disappointing were the underfunding of the Outreach and Assistance to Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers program and the failure of an amendment that would have required labeling for genetically engineered foods. Senator Parry Murray has acknowledged particular concern over the reduction of SNAP (food stamps). Both Murray and Senator Maria Cantwell* were champions of economically stimulating and socially just Farm Bill reforms, and we encourage constituents to send their thanks.

What's next? Well, the food fight marches into the House of Representatives, where it must pass before Obama can sign it into law. The House had originally planned to mark-up the Bill next week, but this process has been delayed – and that is cause for concern. “Whether there is a 2012 Farm Bill or not will largely rest in the hands of the top House Republican leadership,” says the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. No Bill in 2012 might mean that funding levels from the 2008 Bill will continue, which are far less progressive than those proposed by the Senate yesterday. Worse still, with no 2012 Bill nor an extension of 2008’s version, all Farm Bill programs would be defunded until some relief measure was passed.

America is hungry for a Food & Farm Bill that addresses the real challenges facing everyone who eats. While the Senate's bill makes important strides towards a fairer food system, it continues to over fund surplus-oriented industrial agriculture. It does not adequately meet the needs of struggling farmers, workers and eaters -- both domestically and abroad. As we work to eliminate injustice in all its forms, we must continue to demand a better Bill. Our friends at the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group (NWFBAG) are developing a legislative agenda for the House session – whenever it happens – and we encourage you to stay tuned to their website or facebook page. In the meantime, you can Dine Out to support local efforts to organize for a healthier Farm Bill! This Monday, June 25 from 4-10pm, NWFBAG group invites you to Local 360 in Belltown. A percentage of all checks will go towards this Seattle-based group's work to educate and advocate for good food for all.

*Not from WA? See how your Senators voted here

Advocacy Corner: Support the Let's Grow Act!

Do you like federal food policies that:

• Create incentives for people to use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) to purchase fresh, locally-grown fruits and veggies?
• Encourage connections between preschools and small farms?
• Offer grants for the creation or expansion of community gardens?
• Amend laws to allow farmers of color, women, veterans, tribes and first-generation farmers increased access to USDA funds and other subsidies?
• Provide nutritious food on weekends and holidays for hungry schoolchildren? 

So do we!!!

These fabulous progressive programs are just a few components of the Let's Grow Act, recently introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH). The Let's Grow Act recognizes the potential of community-based agriculture to address hunger and decrease obesity, especially among children, the elderly, and low-income Americans.

We need your support to help move this Bill forward!

Please join Lettuce Link in fighting hunger and building local food economies by asking Seattle's Rep. Jim McDermott to co-sponsor the Let's Grow Act. Click here to send an e-mail or call 206-553-7170.

Here's a sample letter to get you started:

Urban communities deserve access to healthy and affordable food, which can also expand local economies. I urge you to co-sponsor the Let's Grow Act! H.R.4351 introduced by Rep. Fudge (D-OH). Everyone should have access to nutritious and affordable food, and I believe that the Let's Grow Act will improve the lives of people in my community. 

Seattle community leaders have stated their commitment to equitable access to healthy food and a health-centered food system with the Seattle Farm Bill Principles. I believe the Let's Grow Act builds on these principles and I urge you to show your support by becoming a co-sponsor. Thank you for your time and commitment to representing the voices of Washington's 7^th district.

(Not a constituent in Washington's 7^th district? Enter your zipcode to find your Representative here.)

After you call or e-mail, let us know how it went! Leave a comment below or on our Facebook page.  

Rally for a Fairer Farm Bill -- TODAY!

Supporters of Lettuce Link --

The Northwest Farm Bill Action Group is hosting a RALLY for a FAIRER FARM BILL -- and it's TODAY at 2pm at Victor Steinbrueck Park (directly north of Pike's Place market). Prior to the rally, supporters and members of NWFBAG will present Senator Patty Murray's King County Director with hundreds of signed postcards from farmers and urban constituents who are advocating for a more just food system that provides for communities, farmers, markets, and ecosystems. Join NWFBAG in demanding that we:

• capping and reforming commodity subsidies

• prioritizing working lands conservation programs

• reinvesting in innovative, job-creating programs for rural economic development, local and regional food systems, renewable energy, organic farming, and young and beginning farmers 

• raising revenue, making cuts to non-safety net programs, and exempting safety net programs from reductions  -- three crucial approaches to justly reducing the deficit.

How does this relate to Lettuce Link's work? 

The Farm Bill is the country’s main food and farm legislation. A multi-year bill, it funds commodity subsidies, crop insurance, conservation programs, food stamps, and many other programs. One specific relationship: the Seattle Community Farm's start-up costs were funded a Community Food Project grant -- Farm Bill money. But more broadly, Lettuce Link's work responds to many of the Bill's darker sides. These include:

 ~funding commodity agriculturists instead of sustainable farmers

~supporting growers of monocrop corn, wheat and soy but offering no subsidies to growers of fruit or vegetables

~centralizing food production in a way that disassociates most of us -- and especially those of us who live in cities -- from the labor and methods of growing food. 

Learn more about the Farm Bill through some of our earlier blog posts (1) and (2) and (3), then come rally with NWFBAG for a fairer, healthier, and tastier food system!! If you aren't able to be at this rally but would like to support the policy priorities of NWFBAG, please find information for calling legislators here.

Detangling the Farm Bill (3): What's eating all the money?

Choice tidbits from the Farm Bill's expansive budget

Estimated in 2008 to cost $284 billion across five years, the Farm Bill is now projected to cost $420 billion. For starters: YIKES. Why such growth? Where’s the money going? Our forks are poised to dig into this big ole fruity pastry.

Graphic thanks to ourohio.org/

Our last post on the history of the Farm Bill took the bill at its word: about farms. But the pie you see above makes clear that nutrition programs are actually the biggest eaters around.

Though the nutrition title has always been the largest piece of Farm Bill pie, it has rapidly expanded in the past two years. Most of the nutrition allocation in the Farm Bill goes to assistance programs like food stamps, which provide a safety net to the poorest members of our communities.  Tough economic times and rising food costs have led to increased participation.  A record 43 million Americans now receive SNAP benefits (i.e. food stamps), which represents a 16% increase in participation in the last year alone.

 

Given that nearly three-quarters of the Farm Bill’s funds go to nutrition programs, the reform effort to rename it the Food Bill makes a lot more sense. Which leads to a bigger question: why do programs as far-flung as land conservation and food stamps share a budgetary umbrella?  To answer this question, we must return to birthplace of these programs: the original wedding of surplus food to hungry people.

Graphic thanks to good-potato.com

At their beginning in the 1930s, food stamps were just that: orange and blue paper squares. For every $1 orange stamp purchased, the buyer received 50 cents in free blue stamps. Orange stamps bought any food. The blue ones were only for certain items that the government had designated as agricultural surpluses- usually lots of dairy, flour, lard, and sometimes seasonal fruits and vegetables. Surplus food + hungry people = everyone satisfied, right?

It worked for a while, but the arrival of World War 2 converted crop surpluses into crop scarcities. Americans found jobs, and the food stamp program ended. When it was resurrected in 1964, its goal was still to support farmers and feed hungry people-- but the political and agricultural landscapes had changed. As we dissected in the last post, our government began to subsidize big agri-businesses to grow huge quantities of commodity crops (corn, soy, rice, wheat, etc.) that are processed into "food". At the same time, food stamps evolved into cash allotments based on income and family size, such that recipients can select foods based on their dietary needs and personal tastes. But while food security may be better than the program's early days, free choice remains highly contentious.

Much publicity has been generated by public figures who go on the 'food stamp diet,' and the results are consistent: you can fill your stomach, but you can’t afford fresh food. Agricultural subsidies make junk food artificially cheap and force people with limited means to choose between health and hunger. The government still doles out its surpluses, just more covertly.

So, surprise, surprise! The funding for Farm Bill pie is complicated. But the connections are plainly obvious: how we fund our farmers determines how we treat our land, bodies, and communities.

Next time, we ask: who? Let’s examine the demographics of the formidable Farm Bill.

City of Seattle unveils its Farm Bill Principles

Big news! The Seattle City Council, led by president Richard Conlin, has released a new piece of their Seattle Local Food Action Initiative: its six principles for healthy farms, food, and people. According to the website, "our purpose in establishing these principles is to provide a framework of values that will help guide decisions by our elected officials." 

A wide array of stakeholders have joined in signing this proposal, including Reverend Dr. Robert L. Jeffrey of Clean Greens, Mary Embleton of Cascade Harvest Coalition and Andrew Stout of Full Circle Farm.  In addition to listing six guiding principles for a healthier Farm Bill, the proposal provides detailed instructions for how these principles might be implemented. 

Exciting news!! And while we're on the topic of Farm Bill reform, there's a great lecture on the horizon.  Dan Imhoff, activist author of Food Fight! A Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, will talk on Tuesday, March 1 at 7pm in UW's Architecture Hall. Imhoff will provide an overview of this enormous piece of legislation that is so overwhelmingly responsible for the ecological and human health of our county.

Detangling the Farm Bill, Part 2: A History

i.e. how we got to where we are.

A note to readers: this is a macro-history of U.S. farm policy organized around the price and income support programs for farmers & conservation initiatives that have been retroactively labeled “farm bills.” Though nutrition assistance programs do account for more than half of our present farm bill's budget, these are not the principle focus of this post.

Our story picks up in 1933, when rural economies across the United States were caught in a downward spiral.  Under conditions of extreme heat and drought, desperate farmers overworked land to squeeze out maximum yields, bringing prices down and further wrecking the land (to become the Dust Bowl). Recognizing that an unregulated market was depressing the rural sector, the Department of Agriculture proposed several safety nets to be funded by taxpayers under The Agricultural Adjustment Act (read: our very first farm bill). This act set a price floor for agricultural goods so that farmers were guaranteed fair pay for their products.  It also set up a system to store grains so they wouldn’t flood the market and depress prices during harvest season. Finally, soil conservation policies funded farmers to leave land fallow and to protect finite groundwater reserves.

World War II brought enormous international demand for American food, and as market prices in the agricultural sector skyrocketed, conservation programs were abandoned to meet demand. However, the government's main role was still to limit production and champion farming interests over big business.  That is, until the 1970s and true industrialization of agriculture under the “get-big-or-get-out” mantra of Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. 

Deeming conservation policies anti-business, Butz ordered all arable land into production.  Skeptics remembered the Depression’s disastrous experience with overproduction, but Butz calmed fears through free trade agreements that opened foreign markets for the vast surpluses that American farmers were now generating. The food stamp program provided another avenue for the Department of Agriculture to unload the extras- onto the plates of hungry Americans.  Crop yields of the 70s truly dwarfed those of earlier eras thanks to noxious cocktails engineered by companies like Dow and Monsanto, who rerouted the chemicals they had produced for the Vietnam War onto American farmland.  Retooled "subsidy" programs (funding from the government to make an industry economically viable) grew certain calories- namely corn and soy- cheaper than ever before.  Meanwhile, funding for so-called "specialty crops" like fruits and vegetables remained minimal, and methods of cultivation devastated land and water systems.  These subsidies continue to provide the animal feed to keep meat and dairy cheap and have spawned an era of foods largely processed from derivations of corn.  Small-scale, sustainable farmers are indebted and unsupported- and we're losing them.

And so the curtain opens on the food landscape we see today. Congress authorized nearly $300 billion for the 2008 farm bill, which continues to favor industrial over sustainable farms, quantity over quality, and processed foods over whole ones. But at least it’s cheap, right?

Amidst compounding crises of diabetes, obesity, and environmental degradation, nearly everyone is paying dearly for low-cost food.  So next time, we ponder: where exactly do those $300 billion go (and where do they not)??

Thanks for reading, and please consider supporting Lettuce Link this holiday season as we continue to envision a city with fresh, nourishing, and affordable food for all.

--Amelia Swinton

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Detangling the Farm Bill: A very short & very partial introduction

Since you’ve wound your way to Lettuce Link’s corner of the blogosphere, it’s safe to say that you have a stake in how we interact with food in this country.  Maybe you’re fed up with high prices at farmers markets, alarmed by skyrocketing rates of diabetes, or just totally grossed out by what kids eat in their school cafeterias.  Regardless of your motives, we probably all agree that many of our food policies have broken.

Over the next few months, this series will set out to situate our frustrations in specific policies, budgets, and farms so that we can understand why dinner tables look like they do. Cause eating has become political, and the health equity of our edible landscape will be determined by how we choose to consume it.

So! We’ve got our work cut out for us. The star of this series is a web of legislation called the Farm Bill that determines the funding and  policies for food and agriculture in the United States.  Rolling in at nearly 1,300 pages of dense legal jargon, our aim here is to pick (pieces of) it apart so that we can put them back together in a healthier, more equitable, and tastier way.

This is the first post of our Farm Bill series, which will be oriented around the following questions (& any others you suggest!):

1) What did the Farm Bill originally aim to do? What does it do now?

2) How does the bill influence spending and policies?

3) Who does the bill affect?

4) What type of agriculture does the bill promote?

5) How does the bill affect our nation’s schools: nutrition education, fitness initiatives, lunch offerings, and garden projects?

6) Can we discuss the language of food, especially terms like “organic”, “sustainable”, “agribusiness”, “obesity”, “food deserts”, “commodities”, and “eating well”?

So that we can eventually sink our teeth into a much juicier question:

7) How can we reform the bill to support a food system that is just, affordable & nourishing, from seed to table? 

We hope that this series helps cut up the formidable Farm Bill into pieces that we can actually chew. Anyone who’s ever heard Sue McGann’s epic introduction to Marra Farm has learned that the interconnections between agriculture, food, health, immigration, foreign aid, ______ are shocking.  So keep voting with that fork, keep recognizing the political charge of each bite.  Things taste a whole lot better that way.

We’ll update you with meeting information for the Community Alliance for Global Justice’s Farm Bill Action meetings. Until then, you can investigate their wealth of online resources at http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/food-justice/farm-bill/ .