Local Action—Bypassing Congress on Farm Bill 2012

Taking Big Ag Head On

Taking on the farm bill is tak­ing on the entrenched agri­cul­ture inter­ests that gave us the food sys­tem we have—pesticides, processed food, fac­tory farms, and all—head on. The Agriculture Committees in the House and the Senate are each filled with con­gress­men and women who are from dis­tricts that ben­e­fit from keep­ing the sta­tus quo and who receive plenty of dona­tions from agribusi­ness. In the 2012 elec­tion cycle, mem­bers of the House Ag com­mit­tee have col­lec­tively taken in $3.7 mil­lion in con­tri­bu­tions from agribusi­ness. For com­par­i­son, their next biggest donor was the com­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­try, which gave them a mere $834,600 in dona­tions. The Senate side is the same, receiv­ing $9.5 mil­lion from agribusi­ness, mak­ing it also their largest group of donors.

Historically, some of the more mon­u­men­tal leg­isla­tive vic­to­ries for sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture were accom­plished only by bypass­ing the Ag Committee. For exam­ple, when Sen. Gaylord Nelson decided to intro­duce a bill to ban DDT, he had his staffer, Roger Blobaum, work to make absolutely sure that it would not go to the Agriculture Committee. “All leg­is­la­tion that had attempted to limit pes­ti­cide use had end up in the Ag Committee, and it was a grave­yard,” recalled Blobaum. Blobaum instead wrote the bill in such a way that it would go through the Interior Committee, which Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, led. More recently, the Ag Committee was an obsta­cle to estab­lish­ing the National Organic Program. But for the farm bill, there’s nowhere to go BUT the Ag Committee.

A Broken Congress

Even if the Agriculture Committee in each house were not such an obsta­cle, Congress itself is bro­ken right now. Republicans want to accom­plish noth­ing in Congress in order to deny Obama any suc­cesses he can claim in his re-election bid. What’s more, Congress is required to cut the deficit any way it can and since Republicans utterly refuse to raise rev­enues, that means cut­ting spend­ing. Anything that requires money is dif­fi­cult to pass through Congress right now, even if it’s some­thing that is desir­able and makes sense. And going into a farm bill debate know­ing that you can’t ask for much of any­thing that costs money is like going into a fight with one hand tied behind your back.

In another year, per­haps those who sup­port sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture could have said, “OK, we’ll live with some parts of the bill we do not like, but how about a new grant pro­gram for organ­ics, or some extra money for pop­u­lar but under­funded con­ser­va­tion pro­grams?” Last time around, there was a pro­posal that almost passed to cap sub­si­dies at $250,000 per farm and many hoped Congress would apply the sav­ings to con­ser­va­tion. The same idea is on the table once again—and it might pass, since it so nearly did before—but where will the money saved by it go? Probably to deficit reduction—or in other words, nowhere.

Local Action

Given that there is momen­tum and resources to work for a more sus­tain­able food sys­tem at the moment, why not use it where there will be the most bang for the buck? When small groups of peo­ple mobi­lize on local ini­tia­tives, big changes can hap­pen in a short period of time.

San Diego pro­vides an excel­lent exam­ple. A few years ago, after the International Rescue Committee spent $40,000 and nine months to jump the reg­u­la­tory hur­dles required to cre­ate a com­mu­nity gar­den in the city, a small group of cit­i­zens took action to change the reg­u­la­tory require­ments. Calling them­selves the 1 in 10 Coalition, rep­re­sent­ing a hope that some­day one out of every 10 meals eaten in San Diego would be local food, they worked with the city gov­ern­ment to change the law. With the recent changes, the munic­i­pal fees for new com­mu­nity gar­dens have been reduced to zero and res­i­dents can keep small num­bers of back­yard chick­ens, minia­ture goats and bees.

A deli­cious way locals in Wisconsin take action is by enjoy­ing a “Taste of the Market” break­fast at the Dane County farm­ers’ mar­ket all win­ter long. The win­ter mar­ket lacks the fes­tive atmos­phere the mar­ket takes on dur­ing the warmer months, when it stretches around the Capitol Square and offers a larger vari­ety of foods, but it makes up for it with its spec­tac­u­lar break­fasts. Each week market-goers can enjoy break­fast made from a sam­pling of local sea­sonal foods, which might tempt them to buy those same prod­ucts from the market’s ven­dors. Eating break­fast is hardly rad­i­cal, but it’s a gen­tle and fun way to intro­duce more Americans to the joys of eat­ing local and sus­tain­able
foods and get­ting to meet the farm­ers who pro­duced them.

One local action hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ously in sev­eral places is the effort to label genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­isms (GMOs). Theoretically, this should be done by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, whether by Congress or the FDA, but we’ve been eat­ing unla­beled GMOs since 1996 and so far the fed­eral gov­ern­ment thinks that’s fine. But Californians are now col­lect­ing sig­na­tures to put a mea­sure to label GMOs on their state bal­lot in the next elec­tion. There have also been recent state efforts to label GMOs in Washington, Vermont, and Connecticut. Although Mendocino County, CA became the first county to ban the grow­ing of GMOs within the coun­try alto­gether back in 2004. And in some states, instead of wait­ing for bills or bal­lot ini­tia­tives to pass, some con­sumers are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands by print­ing off GMO labels from the inter­net and putting them on prod­ucts in the gro­cery store.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at AlterNet.org.