Stallman's logic

Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, defended that organization's farm bill proposal. While some may call it status quo, that is mistaken, he said.

He said that while other groups have put out farm bill proposals, only Farm Bureau's and the USDA's have sought to do it within the budget guidelines for the 2007 farm bill.

Our proposal offsets a $250 million annual increase in conservation funding for fruit and vegetable producers by capping spending on the Conservation Security Program (CSP) in 2016 and 2017.

The School Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program was authorized to encourage increased consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables by children. The program offers fresh fruit and vegetables free of charge to children in 400 schools in 14 states. The program was funded at $6 million for the 2002-2003 school year and was extended through the 2003-2004 school year. Farm Bureau supports expansion of the School Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program to 10 schools in every state. This should only cost about $7.5 million annually but will provide significant benefits to fruit and vegetable producers now and in the long term, while promoting healthy eating habits among children.
In recent years, USDA has acquired an average of over $300 million a year in fruit and vegetables for schools. About $50 million is purchased and distributed through the Department of Defense Fresh Program, which supplies fresh fruits and vegetables to schools under contract with USDA. We support the administration’s proposal to provide an additional $50 million a year for the purchase of fruits and vegetables specifically for the school lunch program. Some of this new spending could be through added funds for the Department of Defense Fresh Program.


Here, I asked Stallman about the $250 million in exchange for the planting restriction.

TK: Maybe it is the budget constraints, but Farm Bureau's farm bill proposal doesn't approach a sense of fair play for fruit and vegetable producers. Only $7.5 million a year for the fruit and vegetable snack program - in just 10 schools per state - is unacceptable. The industry has to hope it can do much better than this status quo, commodity program-oriented proposal.