Food Fight!: The Legal Debate Over The Obesity Epidemic, Food Labeling, And The Government's Involvement In What You Eat
FARM BILL 2012: SOME THINGS EVERY CONSUMER SHOULD KNOW
My wife and I enrolled our daughter in a farm class this summer. It is a community class that teaches suburbanite kids about farming, how food is grown etc. Most of the class is really spent seeing, petting and talking about different farm animals. Typically, each class ended with a pony ride on the much beloved horse, Benji. It would seem implicit that the class also discuss where food comes from. Neither I, my wife nor the instructor found it necessary to tell my two year old daughter that the pig they were petting was going to die, or that we were going to eat him. My daughter doesn’t know where food comes from. She hasn’t explicitly put together that chicken nuggets come from the wholesale slaughter of chickens or that her scrambled eggs were very nearly the little chicks that liked to pet during class. For most of us, where our food comes from is similarly a mystery, it shows up on the shelf and we’re happy to eat it.
Knowing where food comes from and how it was raised, grew or captured is an important part of understanding the interconnected world we live. Unfortunately, most of us know about the source of our sustenance about as much as my daughter does. Knowing the policy that shapes something so basic as food is critical to everyone, hence the importance of following the debate about the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill is up for renewal in 2012 and directs the food and agricultural policy of the US. It affects international trade, environmental policy, food safety, rural communities and food subsidy programs.
In this upcoming bill there are some key issues where consumers should educate themselves.
The most prevalent topic of the upcoming Farm Bill is the recession’s effect on the budget and what cuts farmers can expect. The most obvious program up on the chopping block is direct payments to farmers. Farmers who grow in critical areas such as wheat, corn etc. are paid a set dollar amount by the federal government per acre of land farmed. They check comes no matter what, regardless of grain prices, the season’s weather or the farmer’s financial state. Since this program was instituted in 1996 huge agribusinesses have reaped millions of dollars in payments by the federal government during record high grain prices. This program has also been a contributing factor to the acquisition of small farms by conglomerates.
Most farmers’ groups seem to accept the fact that cuts need to be made and that agriculture will have to take their fair share. Cutting the direct payment program is an obvious choice and most farmer interest groups are content to see it go. Where farmer interest groups will push back are heavily subsidized insurance programs and countercyclical payment programs. The countercyclical payment program is where a farmer will receive payments from the federal government when the prices fall below a predetermined point, providing a baseline of revenue to the farmer regardless of what the market is doing.
Cuts to direct payment plan and the expansion of countercyclical programs are only two of the issues in the upcoming farm bill. Several groups hope to use the pending budget cuts to reshape the farm bill, advancing interests that include the environment, organic and sustainable farming and introducing more farmers to the trade.
There are many great resources to follow the debate on the Farm Bill. I’ve listed a few of them below.
http://www.agandfoodlaw.com/
http://harvestpublicmedia.org/article/773/round-and-round-we-go/5
http://deltafarmpress.com/government/2012-farm-bill-may-bring-even-deeper-cuts-agriculture-2011?page=1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-crossfield/a-new-vision-for-the-2012_b_549257.html
COMMENTS
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Even today, there are still areas in our country that depend on farming to power the local economy. Growing up in the rural Midwest, I understood that my community’s well-being depended upon the success of our farmers. However, even in my case, my connection with farms and farming was at a distance. I have no idea whether the food my family purchased at the grocery store was grown somewhere near us. I do not know if our food dollars were supporting our local farmers in any significant way. It will be interesting to see how the Farm Bill’s renewal and possible revision in 2012 addresses the cost of food and the way that money makes it to farmers. For communities like the one where I grew up, the answer to this question will affect everyone.