Monica Potts sats the next head of the Senate Agriculture Committee has a history of helping small-scale producers, overhauling food-safety regulation, and supporting sustainable practices.
Stabenow, who became the first woman elected to represent Michigan in the Senate, has been a rank-and-file member of the committee since she joined the Senate in 2000. Agriculture makes up about a quarter of the state’s economy, and its varied crop yield makes it the second-most diverse farm state after California. Stabenow’s constituents want her to focus on crops like fruit and vegetables, which are often grown by smaller-scale producers and get very little federal support. (Currently, almost all subsidizes go to industrial-scale farmers who grow a handful of crops like wheat, corn, soy, and rice.) During the last farm-bill reauthorization in 2008, she introduced grants for these “specialty crop” farmers. She also championed local producer-to-school programs, which accomplish two goals of reformers: getting more nutritious food to children and creating sustainable, local markets for small farmers. “She comes to it with a much broader perspective than a lot of the Midwest farm-belt people that get locked into the commodity programs,” says Ken Dahlberg, director of the Michigan Land Trustees, a group that promotes conservation and sustainable agriculture.