The Farm Bill backlash

Trying to prevent a “secret” bill from getting passed

By Culinate staff

November 7, 2011

Recently, food activists have gotten pretty agitato over the fact that Congress has been trying to sneak a new Farm Bill into law without due legislative review.

So far, however — as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Minnesota Independent, among others, have reported — there’s been enough protest to stall the new bill.

As Twilight Greenaway pointed out on Grist, the bill’s proposed $23 billion in subsidy cuts would negatively impact America’s food and farms while leaving big ag relatively unscathed.

And as a recent Oxfam America article explained, nobody should approve of this rushed Farm Bill:

If you’re a Tea Party supporter, you probably shouldn’t like this deal because:

1. It is a back-room deal negotiated without any public scrutiny.
2. It cuts less wasteful spending than other proposals.
3. The $23 billion in proposed cuts could shrink dramatically if the volatile agriculture markets or increasingly volatile weather swings production or prices in a new direction.
4. It authorizes the government to pick certain industries/commodities as winners over others.

If you’re an OWS supporter, you shouldn’t like this deal because:

1. It was negotiated to satisfy high-powered industry lobbies that pay lots of money to influence the Ag Committee.
2. It’s a giveaway to big industrial farms at the expense of family farmers.
3. It promotes unhealthy, unsustainable farming practices at the expense of sustainable farming.
4. It targets conservation and nutrition programs for cuts disproportionately.

But is protesting congressional shenanigans the right tactic? As a recent Food & Water Watch posting on AlterNet declared, the real issue may not be federal farm subsidies at all:

So if the most often-cited example of farm subsidies is about to end, does that mean we’re on our way to a food system that makes broccoli more affordable than fast-food burgers? It’s not quite that simple. As we describe in a new report, released this week with the Public Health Institute, subsidies are not making junk food cheaper and more abundant than healthy food — the real culprit is the deregulation of agriculture markets, the failure to enforce anti-trust law, and the millions spent on marketing junk food.