I'm one of those people who reads anything and everything about farm issues. Why, then, do I find it so hard to wrap my arms around this impending Farm Bill about which we keep hearing? Michael Pollan calls it a Food Bill, and it is. It comes out every five years, and it determines funding for a wide variety of farm-related efforts, which ultimately determines what farmers grow, what there is to sell to consumers, dump in schools, and export to other countries as well as what the future of farm land quality and use will be.
But, just try reading about this stuff. It's sort of torture. Horticulture and organic agriculture are lumped together. There are sections on multi-species fruit fly production and specialty crop phytosanitary certification. There is all kinds of talk about subsidies paid for commodities. You would have beaten me in Trivial Pursuit if I had had to name one commodity a year ago.
Farm Bill 2007 seems to be a course-changing opportunity for our country because it has the potential to level the playing field a bit between agribusiness and small family farms, providing a more balanced level of support to a wider diversity of needs. It could recognize the shifting priorities of the American people to a healthier food supply (more nutritious, more land conservation, higher food security) through financial support and incentives. It could recognize the growing demand (something like 20 percent growth per year) for organic production of our food supply by providing a proportionate percentage of governmental resources for research, development, support for conversion to organic certification, insurance and other infrastructure necessities that can finally catapult organics to mainstream, affordable availability.
But it's all a blur. When I try reading about it, I find a million different agendas, a rolling timetable of when each part of the bill is being "marked up" and calls for action that isolate issues without giving me a clear view of all sides of the issue.
I discovered that Congressman John Barrow from Georgia's 12th District serves on the House Committee on Agriculture, which is authoring the Farm Bill 2007. Congressman Barrow is on the Subcommittee of Specialty Crops, Rural Development and Foreign Agriculture as well as the Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture. He just concluded his Third Annual Rural Listening Tour throughout his district, where he heard first-hand the issues and concerns of rural communities.
I wrote to Congressman Barrow and asked him what we can do to have any impact at all on the Farm Bill 2007. I will report back if and when I hear from him.
In the meantime, I am reminded of why I started this blog almost a year ago. I was shocked to discover how recent so many of the changes were in industrial agriculture and that myself and other members of my generation were basically guinea pigs. I was concerned that my children would be guinea pigs as well and wanted to do something to help other folks, especially moms, wrap their arms around what was going on. Is it possible that this Farm Bill could complete the paradigm shift that could give us back a purity and goodness lost for merely, shockingly, just one generation? Or am I simply an optimist?
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment