When Congress returns in 2011, the chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry will be filled by a woman for only the second time in history. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who is replacing Sen. Blanche Lincoln, will be the first chair from Michigan, and advocates for food-policy reform hope her history and the needs of her state could mean a chair willing to chip away at the massive subsidies for commodity crops, like corn, that have shaped American agriculture for generations. The farm bill is due for reauthorization next year, and Stabenow has a chance to shape it and guide agricultural policy in a new direction. Of course, that hope is a slim one; food policy has, so far, been resistant to change.
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.
Stabenow has championed small producers. She supported a rural micro-entrepreneur assistance program that helps 10 or fewer employees to get small loans that provide start-up cash for organizations that provide training, marketing assistance, and other support for the businesses. In the food-safety bill that is still on the agenda for the lame-duck Congress, she sponsored a provision that would provide food-safety education and training for small farmers, and amendments that would exempt smaller producers from the record-keeping requirements many feared would drive them out of business. Stabenow has demonstrated concern over food deserts -- areas in rural and urban landscapes that lack quality grocery stores -- and many hope she'll address food-security issues as chair.
With comprehensive climate change legislation off the table for the foreseeable future, there is also hope Stabenow's support for carbon-emission cuts will translate into support for sustainable agriculture. She has introduced legislation that would allow sustainable-agriculture investments to be used as carbon offsets. Environmental fights raging in Michigan -- like fights over limiting the size of concentrated animal feeding operations -- that Stabenow's constituents will demand attention for may influence the national debate as well.
Ferd Hoefner of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition says Stabenow has worked to revitalize funding for agriculture research, which has fallen over the years. Research on climate-change mitigation and adaptation will be key to the survival of the American agriculture industry, he says. "I don't think there's anybody higher than her in terms of how much they put into agricultural research."
With Stabenow at the helm of the Agriculture Committee, the initiatives she's worked for -- those that support small farmers, selling crops locally, and rural producers -- and for which the Obama administration has also voiced support, might actually turn into law. "She's got a long-standing interest in many of the issues we work on and think are key," Hoefner says. "That bodes well for a fair discussion." But Stabenow has made compromises that give some food advocates pause. In 2002, she voted to limit the payments made to large-scale industrial agriculture but reversed that position in the 2008 farm bill in exchange for financial support for farmers who grow fruits, vegetables, and other small-scale crops.
More important, though, she's up against a committee full of senators from states that rely on commodity-crop payments and a new counterpart in the House, Republican Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, who wants to postpone rewriting the farm bill and the current subsidy system. "The rest of the committee has a very strong makeup of senators who care very much about maintaining programs the way that's beneficial to those farmers," says Steph Larsen, assistant director of organizing for the Center for Rural Affairs. "It's a difficult position for her to be in."
Still, given the other choices for chair -- like Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, one of the country's top wheat producing states, or Tom Harkin of Iowa, who supports subsidies for biofuel crops like corn and soy -- Stabenow was likely the best option from the perspective of local-food advocates. Even if her leadership doesn't produce a farm bill that finally cuts wasteful subsidies and produces a more balanced agricultural system, the appointment of a senator who isn't from a farm-belt state is an important one, at least symbolically. "She brings a much more holistic approach," Dahlberg says. "And maybe she'll be willing to fight for some of these [policies] more than a typical senator."
