A Bill You Can Eat

By Daniel Moss | July 20, 2007

What single bill -- albeit with a great many tentacles -- currently sits before Congress and will define the future of so much of the commons -- our land use, soil and water quality, the future of our rural communities? Look no further than the tip of your fork: the Farm Bill.

Michael Pollan, in the New York Times magazine, April 22, 2007, described it this way: "This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation…sets the rules for the American food system -- indeed to a considerable extent, for the world's food system."

The Farm Bill works hand-in-glove with other marvels of free trade like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Again Pollan: "The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since NAFTA is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s."

Many of us attending a conference hosted by the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders entitled, "Our Evolving Food System: Perspectives from the Heartland," had the occasion to meet with two of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin’s staffers -- Tom Moreland and Ellen Huntoon. Senator Harkin is Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, which is in the throes of marking up the Farm Bill scheduled to be voted on this fall.

We spoke for and with those pesky small and organic farmers, unhappy with how recent farm bills top off the tank of gas-guzzling, highly-concentrated forms of industrial agriculture. Many Iowan farmers benefit from the overproduction and cheap corn distortions of the Farm Bill's subsidy program as is. But a vocal minority (in alliance with other farmers around the country, consumers and environmental groups) is pushing for a Farm Bill based on supply management (curb overproduction to keep prices higher and stable) and that might usher in a sustainable food system. One concrete proposal is the National Family Farm Coalition’s Food from Family Farm Act.

Harkin's staffers suggested a few changes to the Farm Bill that might inch U.S. agriculture towards a semblance of sustainability: 1) capping subsidies so growers aren't given perverse incentives to grow tens of thousands of acres of a single crop; 2) fully implementing the conservation reserve program (land set-asides to restore the health of ecosystems and dissuade over-production); and 3) bringing energy more fully into the farm bill -- meaning offering incentives for biofuels production. I'll talk more about this in a future blog.