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I'm still poring through Obama's budget proposal, but one thing stands out: the summary says the budget restores the funding cut from food stamps (SNAP) when the childhood nutrition bill passed. The budget also says it will give $35 million to the Office of the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture to combat food deserts. And food and nutrition services are one of the few areas where the Ag department's budget is increased, from $86.7 billion in 2010 to $99 billion for fiscal year 2012. Lots of other areas were cut, including the crop insurance program -- which is one of the ways those big farmers get huge subsidies for commodity crops.While the budget says it's devoted to conservation and preservation, some programs were cut, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, funding. EQIP is a favorite target of the administration, and is a mixed-bag program, but Ferd Hoefner of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition routinely argues that it does more good than not. The NSAC was not pleased with the budget:
The President’s FY 2012 budget calls for deep cuts to farm bill mandatory spending for farm conservation with over $1 billion in permanent rescissions. As in their FY 2011 budget request, the big three programs targeted for reductions are the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), and the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP). We believe these reductions are irresponsible and unfair. Natural resource and environmental needs related to agriculture are great and farmer demand for these programs continues to outstrip the supply of dollars. No other farm bill mandatory funding accounts were similarly targeted.The coalition argues that these are questions better left to Congress, which is due to revisit the farm bill this year. Either way, all of this is subject to congressional approval, and a world in which this particular House cuts funding for Big Ag and tackles food desserts is one I'd like to see.
