More $ for Organics? Yes Please, Mom.

The Farm Bill is not for the feint of heart.  Good thing other brave souls are diving in head first and sorting that mess out.  The Environmental Working Group (how I love them) took on the task, sorting through millions of USDA records to count, graph, and share who gets all the fat subsidies.  I am anything but a farm bill expert, though I confess to having strong opinions about the need for some serious reform anyway (shocking!).  I am a softie for smaller farms (Wendell Berry is a personal hero), dig the idea of having a local source of foods, really like CSA's and visit our plethora of farmers' markets regularly (and not just to see Wiggles the clown and the balloon guy, though the kid action is, admittedly, a big draw).  If I could possibly love Wikipedia more for its ability to explain all things however complex, I do now for its perfect description of the U.S. Farm Bill:

Farm bills are often seen as among the most rampant areas of political corruption in American politics, with levels of pork barrel spending and irrelevant and near-irrelevant riders approaching or even exceeding the levels found in the federal budget.  Furthermore, it is often criticized for its role in setting US ag subsidies, which are widely seen as unfair to foreign competition and antithetical to free trade, as well as being corporate welfare as most of its recipients are not small farmers but rather large agribusiness corporations.

More $ for the Good Stuff.  Big as the Farm Bill is, tossing a few bucks at the things I support is for sure a good thing.  Spread the wealth, you know?  That's where EWG comes in.  They have a great Grow Organics Proposal in Congress right now (yes, it's time to pass another farm bill), with an even better ad campaign - Don't Leave Organics Behind (that eye-catching pic, above).  Hard to believe $1 billion over 5 years for organics and the like is small potatoes, but in this political game, mamas, it is.

Itchin' to Get Active?  If you, too, support the groovier side of American farming, check out EWG's Grow Organics Proposal.  They have an easy e-mail alert you can send to Congress telling them that you support the proposal. If you're not into all this, no need to e-mail anyone, because the folks in DC are successfully ignoring it already!

Comments

[LTF]

Cooking Up a Story did a several part series on the Farm Bill for paypeople - online video interviews if you're lookin' to be informed: http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/the-farm-bill/. Listen & learn. Complex but super important bill.

[Lisa]

Thought some of you might enjoy this article by Sandra Steingraber, author of Having Faith - An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood: http://www.organicvalley.coop/culture/moomom/organicmanifesto/index.html