Farm bill roundup 8/27

Take integrated approach to a food-and-farm bill Writing in The Des Moines Register, Neil Hamilton of Drake University suggests the Senate should look to improve the diet of Americans through the farm bill. He suggests that Congress should:

- Expand the fruit and vegetable snack program to cover additional states and schools - so more kids have access to fresh, nutritious food. Better yet, purchase locally grown fruits and vegetables so schools are connected to nearby farms and the program supports local economies.
- Fund the specialty-crop block grants and give states flexibility to support innovative projects. Support ideas such as the "fresh checks" used in several states to provide food-assistance recipients with bonus checks to buy nutritious produce at farmers markets.
- Implement the much-delayed COOL - country of origin labeling - program, and give consumers the information they want and need to make food choices. Making informed choices is a basic tenet of our democracy. Congress should end efforts to keep consumers in the dark on the origins of our food and what is in it
.- Allow the interstate shipment of state-inspected meat, done in ways that do not threaten consumer safety but do create opportunities for rural food businesses. Isn't it ironic that we accept shiploads of food with few inspections from China, a country with at best a rudimentary appreciation for the rule of law, but we bar meat produced here and inspected by state employees from moving across state lines?
- Accelerate the move to organic food by supporting producers as they convert their farms and by funding the research critical to this form of production.
- Amend the popular value-added producer marketing grants to include cooperative efforts to process and market foods in regional food systems like the one Iowa has built over the last 10 years.

The key is whether we approach food and farm policy as an integrated whole or as unrelated blocks. The farm bill can't be food stamps in this jar, farm programs in another and conservation over here. All these issues are parts of a comprehensive policy - one that expands opportunities for farmers and food businesses, that gives consumers access to healthful foods and that addresses the nutrition needs of all citizens - kids, mothers and seniors.Recognizing that all citizens deserve a healthful, nutritious diet - and delivering on that promise - should be the hallmark of a sustainable food.


Draft proposal for commodities from Harkin From Farms.com:
A draft proposal for commodity programs circulated by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would create a supplemental crop-insurance program in lieu of continued ad-hoc disaster programs. The plan would also shift the counter-cyclical programs to a national per-acre revenue target price. Marketing loan rates would also be adjusted based on average annual prices over the past five years. Harkin has sent copies of his proposed chairman's mark to other members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, but those documents have not been made public.