Help Us Make the Farm Bill Better

Every five years or so, Congress passess an enormous piece of legislation informally known as the Farm Bill. Outside of certain nonprofit and agribusiness circles, it doesn't get a lot of attention. But it's incredibly important, because it sets the policies that determine what America grows and eats. And surprise: The Farm Bill is pretty flawed. Over the decades, it's been distorted by business to favor unsustainable farming. It's not only wasting taxpayer money—it's making our diets worse and harming the environment.

The 2012 Farm Bill is making its way through Congress now. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group and author and activist Dan Imhoff recently joined forces to write a letter demanding that Congress pass a better Farm Bill. They recruited some other people you might have heard of (Mario Batali, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Wendell Berry, Will Allen, Marion Nestle) to sign on.

Read their letter below and add your signature here. We just might be able to get Congress to pass a slightly better Farm Bill this year.

An Open Letter to Members of Congress:

With the 2008 farm bill due to expire in a matter of months, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved legislation in April to steer the next five years of national food and agriculture policy. We applaud the positive steps that the proposed bill takes under Senator Debbie Stabenow’s leadership, including incentives for fruit and vegetable purchases, scaling up local production and distribution of healthy foods and bolstering marketing and research support for fruit, nut and vegetable farmers.

Unfortunately, the Senate bill falls far short of the reforms needed to come to grips with the nation’s critical food and farming challenges. It is also seriously out of step with the nation’s priorities and what the American public expects and wants from our food and farm policy. In a national poll last year, 78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more affordable and accessible should be a top priority in the farm bill. Members of the U.S. Council of Mayors and the National League of Cities have both echoed this sentiment in recent statements calling for a healthy food and farm bill.

Although the committee proposal includes important reforms to the commodity title, we are deeply concerned that it would continue to give away subsidies worth tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the largest commodity crop growers, insurance companies, and agribusinesses even as it drastically underfunds programs to promote the health and food security of all Americans, invest in beginning and disadvantaged farmers, revitalize local food economies and protect natural resources. We strongly object to any cuts in food assistance during such dire times for so many Americans. These critical shortcomings must be addressed when the bill goes to the Senate floor.

As written, the bill would spend billions to guarantee income for the most profitable farm businesses in the country. This would come primarily in the form of unlimited crop insurance premium subsidies to industrial-scale growers who can well afford to pay more of their risk management costs. Crop insurance programs must be reformed to work better for diversified and organic farmers and to ensure comprehensive payment caps or income eligibility requirements. Otherwise, this so called “safety net” becomes an extravagant entitlement for affluent landowners and insurance companies.

In addition, the proposed $9 billion-a-year crop insurance program comes with minimal societal obligations. Growers collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance premium subsidies should at least be required to take simple measures to protect wetlands, grassland and soil. Instead, the unlimited subsidies will encourage growers to plow up fragile areas and intensify fencerow-to-fencerow cultivation of environmentally sensitive land, erasing decades of conservation gains.

Most of the benefits from these programs would flow to the producers of five big commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, rice and wheat). Meanwhile, millions of consumers lack access to affordable fruits and vegetables, with the result that the diets of fewer than five percent of adults meet the USDA’s daily nutrition guidelines. Partly as a result, one in three young people is expected to develop diabetes and the diet-related health care costs of diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke are rising precipitously, reaching an estimated $70 billion a year.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Government Accountability Office has identified modest reforms to crop insurance subsidies that could save as much as $2 billion a year. Half could come from payment limits that affect just four percent of the growers in the program. Congress should use these savings to provide full funding for conservation and nutrition assistance programs and strengthen initiatives that support local and healthy food, organic agriculture and beginning and disadvantaged farmers. These investments could save billions in the long run by protecting valuable water and soil resources, creating jobs and supporting foods necessary for a healthy and balanced diet.

When it is your turn to vote, we urge you to stand up for local and healthy food and nutrition programs and to support equitable and fiscally responsible amendments that will protect and enhance public health and the environment while maintaining a reasonable safety net for the farmers who grow our food. More than ever before, the public demands this. Come November, they will be giving their votes to members of Congress who supported a healthy food and farm bill that puts the interests of taxpayers, citizens and the vast majority of America’s farmers first and foremost.

Our nation was built on the principles of protecting our greatest legacy: the land on which we grow our food and feed our families. Stand with us to protect not only farmers, without whom we would all go hungry, but to enact a food and farm bill that fairly and judiciously serves the interests of all Americans.

Sincerely,

Leigh Adcock
Executive Director, Women, Food and Agriculture Network

Will Allen
Farmer, Founder, CEO of Growing Power

Dan Barber
Executive Chef and Co-owner Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Neal D. Barnard, MD
President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Sung e Bai
Director of National Programs, Slow Food USA

Mario Batali
Chef, Author, Entrepreneur

Fedele Bauccio
CEO, Bon Appetit Management Company

Jo Ann Baumgartner
Wild Farm Alliance

Rick Bayless
Chef, Frontera Grill and Topolobampo

David Beckmann
President, Bread for the World

Andy Bellatti, MS, RD
Andy Bellatti Nutrition

Wendell Berry
Lane's Landing Farm

Haven Bourque
Founder, HavenBMedia

Tom Colicchio
Craft Restaurants

Christopher Cook
Author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis

Ken Cook
President, Environmental Working Group

Ann Cooper
Chef and Founder, Food Family Farming Foundation

Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association

Laurie David
Author, Family Dinner

Michael R. Dimock
President, Roots of Change

Christopher Elam
Executive Director, INFORM

Maria Echeveste
Senior fellow, Center for American Progress (for affiliation purposes only)

Andy Fisher
Co-founder and founding Executive Director, Community Food Security Coalition

Chef Kurt Michael Friese
Owner, Devotay Restaurant & Bar and Publisher, Edible Iowa River Valley

Joan Dye Gussow
Grower, Author, Professor Emerita Teachers College, Columbia University

Melinda Hemmelgarn, MS, RD
Food Sleuth Radio

Gary Hirshberg
Co-founder and Chairman, Stonyfield

Mark Hyman, MD
Chairman, The Institute for Functional Medicine

John Ikerd
Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics

Dan Imhoff
Author, Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill

Wes Jackson
President, The Land Institute

Kristi Jacobson
Catalyst Films

Michael Jacobson
Executive Director, Center for Science in the Public Interest

Robert Kenner
Director, Food Inc.

Navina Khanna
Co-Founder and Field Director, Live Real

Andrew Kimbrell
Executive Director, Center for Food Safety

Fred Kirschenmann
Author, Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays From a Farmer Philosopher

Melissa Kogut
Executive Director, Chefs Collaborative

Anna Lappé
Author, Diet for a Hot Planet, Cofounder, Small Planet Institute

Robert S. Lawrence, MD
Center for a Livable Future, Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Kelle Louaillier
Executive Director, Corporate Accountability International

Bill McKibben
Author, Deep Economy

Liz McMullan
Executive Director, Jamie Oliver Food Foundation

Craig McNamara
President Sierra Orchards and Center for Land-Based Learning

Carolyn Mugar
Founder and Director of Farm Aid

Frances Moore Lappé
Cofounder, Small Planet Institute

Dave Murphy and Lisa Stokke
Food Democracy Now!

Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, II
Director for Public Witness, Presbyterian Church

Marion Nestle
Professor, NYU and Author, Food Politics

Y. Armando Nieto
Executive Director, California Food and Justice Coalition

Nicolette Hahn Niman
Rancher, Author, Attorney

Denise O'Brien
Co-founder, Women, Food and Agriculture Network; organic farmer

Robyn O'Brien
Executive Director, AllergyKids Foundation

Michael Pollan
Professor, UC Berkeley School of Journalism

Nora Pouillon
Chef, Author, Owner of Restaurant Nora

LaDonna Redmond
Food Justice Advocate and Food and Community Fellow

John Robbins
Author, Diet For A New America, The Food Revolution, and No Happy Cows

Ocean Robbins
Host, Food Revolution Network

Ricardo Salvador
Union of Concerned Scientists

Eric Schlosser
Author, Fast Food Nation

Lori Silverbush
Silverbush Productions

Matthew Scully
Author, Dominion

George L. Siemon
CEO, Organic Valley

Michele Simon
President, Eat Drink Politics

Jim Slama
President, FamilyFarmed.org

Naomi Starkman
Founder, Editor-in-chief, Civil Eats

Anim Steel
Real Food Challenge

Josh Viertel
Former President, Slow Food USA

David Wallinga, MD
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Alice Waters
Owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant

Andrew Weil, MD
Founder and Director, Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine

Tom and Denesse Willey
T&D Willey Farms

Paul Willis
Founder/Manager Niman Ranch Pork Company

Mark Winne
Mark Winne Associates

Photo via (cc) Flickr user dobak