Phoebe jumped on Michael Pollan's food bill column before I got a chance to, but it merits repeating: Read it.
Why? Well, for most of recent history, American eaters have been the very last factor of importance in legislation on agriculture, most explicitly, in the farm bill. Farmers -- the down-home, family farmers who grow the food you actually eat -- are also far from central to our policy. What we subsidize is much more about Coca-Cola and Cheetos than it is about arugula and asparagus. It's been a really long time since subsidies were about helping family farmers and protecting our food supply. Lately, though, the eaters of America have been raising some stink about a farm bill that doesn't do much toward actually feeding Americans well.
To appease them, this year's House rendition includes some tiny advances. There's some money for nutrition programs and environmental protections, and a first-time allowance of about $2 billion to support "specialty crops," Pollan reports. "Specialty crops" are what people actually eat: peppers, cucumbers, asparagus, and all those other non-commodity plants.
While these additions are nice, as Pollan points out, "As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged." There's still a far-off possibility that the Senate bill could do just that. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) want an amendment that would cap annual payouts to any one farmer at $250,000. Then there's the "Fresh Act," from Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a proposal to junk the subsidies and replace them with a free, government revenue insurance for farmers and ranchers. Big Ag would get a payout only if prices fell more than 15 percent because of an actual crisis, like bad weather or price collapse. This plan would save something in the neighborhood of $20 billion.
Either these proposals have the possibility of making the farm bill less about feeding Big Ag and more about feeding the rest of America, though the Big Ag lobby is doing their best to make this sort of change seem "radical." They're sure to turn up the heat on legislators in hopes to preserving their privileged status, which means all of us regular old eaters will have to make our case as well.
--Kate Sheppard
