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vote how they want to eat. And this Farm Bill that were working on - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
vote how they want to eat. And this Farm Bill that were working on - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
I am so excited that there is an organization out there that is helping moms and dads vote how they want to eat. And this Farm Bill that were working on now is such an important aspect of it . That we can have children in this
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This pie chart at left shows how much money, over the course of ten years, the federal government expects to be spent through the Farm Bill. Notice the big orange section – this is largely for funding federal food assistance programs for vulnerable, low-income individuals and families in the nutrition title. And even though this orange section may look so huge, keep these two things in mind:
- One, more than 40 million people in this
country live in households struggling with
- hunger. This problem would be far worse if not for the nation’s very effective anti-hunger programs like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps).
- Two, SNAP-type programs are needs-based programs, which means people must qualify for the benefit, they have to sign up for it and they
have to prove that they need it. Still, as you can imagine, with this much money in one program, it is looked at as a place to find funding for other programs.
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The second slide shows the budget without the nutrition title, which basically shows you where the rest of the money in the Farm Bill goes. Primarily for commodity farmers – by that I mean farmers who grow corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice and cotton – in the blue section, and crop insurance on the left. These programs, as you can imagine, tend to overly support big agribusiness farms. The $24 billion in conservation programs goes to protect healthy soil and clean water, and you can see this tiny, tiny little sliver on the bottom left that’s funding for local and regional food programs and for organic farmers.
This chart right here helps to explain why we really need to rebalance our Farm Bill so that it supports healthy, safe affordable food for all.
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The Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic provides deeper expertise into these critical Farm Bill programs. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest anti- hunger food and nutrition program – it accounts for around 80% of the Farm Bill expenditures and it affects up to 13% of the population. This program represents the first line against
- hunger. It started from the commonly known
paper “food stamps”, but now the program uses an Electronic Balance Transfer card that allows participants to go to a grocery store and swipe to purchase food. It is meant to provide sufficient nutritious food, and 2/3 of SNAP recipients are children, the elderly, or disable persons, so it’s vital that they can get healthy food. There are other nutrition programs within the Farm Bill that target these groups, but SNAP is the largest one.
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Millions of Americans have experience food insecurity throughout the year. By food insecurity, we mean a difficulty providing enough food for all family members because they just don’t have enough resources. Children are actually more likely to be food insecure, and food insecurity that impacts children is particularly troubling because of how it negatively influences development and school
- performance. Very small children with food
insecurity may suffer from cognitive delays, and young school-age children who are food insecure experience lower reading and math performance. That’s why the Farm Bill is such an important program when it comes to making sure children have adequate food for a healthy life.
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Healthy and local food access programs in the Farm Bill are really
- important. And you may remember
from earlier slides, we’re talking about an almost invisible piece of the Farm Bill that goes towards local and regional food systems. But the 2014 Farm Bill actually made the biggest investment yet in local and regional food, with about $429 million over five years. And while it may not seem like much, it is actually the largest amount we’ve ever put in local and regional food systems. This goes towards healthy food access, helping farmers sell directly to consumers, helping farmers add and keep more value in their products, and building infrastructure like food hubs, which helps smaller farms sell into bigger markets, like universities, schools, or hospitals.
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The last Farm Bill made a lot of progress, and it’s really critical that we build on the momentum. One of the most visible programs that’s helping bring healthy, local food to your door is the Farmers’ Market and Local Food Promotion Program, which is actually a combination of two different programs with the goal of connecting producers and consumers to healthy local
- food. These are largely competitive grants that support
farmers markets, other direct to consumer markets like CSA’s, road side stands, and go towards training, expansion, and improvement of your local farmers’ market. If you go down to your local farmers’ market on Saturday morning to buy produce, there is a good chance your farmers’ market is using federal dollars that come directly from the Farm Bill to do some of the behind the scenes marketing, or training, or the infrastructure that’s making those markets work. The bad news is that the program’s funding is in
- danger. !
As was mentioned earlier, a lot of Farm Bill programs receive funding every year once the Farm Bill is passed, no matter what happens in the budget process, but programs like this don’t. So this is the time that it’s really important for advocates who care about the progress we’ve made in local and regional food systems to really go to Congress and make their voices heard that these programs need funding in the next Farm Bill – and not just to get funding, but as these programs have proven to be so successful, to hopefully get increased funding. !
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We’ve heard that a lot of you are interested in and concerned perhaps about the state of organics. I’ll highlight three programs in the Farm Bill that directly support organic production. The Organic Cost-Share program helps cover some of the costs that farmers must pay every year to bring out certifiers to their farms to make sure that they are following organic practices. This is limited to only $750 a year, so we’re not talking about a lot of money but it can make a huge difference for farmers who are trying to get off the ground. Organic Research is only funded at $20m per year for all
- f the research and all of the extension training and
assistance for the whole U.S. So we’re not talking about a lot of money, but that’s also at risk in this next farm bill. Don’t go to sleep on me! I want to talk about why crop insurance is important for organic farmers. The same way you wouldn’t drive your car around town without car insurance, farmers face similar risks, some of which are within their control and some of which are not. But the expense – or unavailability at all – of insurance for
- rganic farmers compared to conventional or
commodity farmers can be a real barrier. There are provisions to the crop insurance portion of the Farm Bill that we want to protect progress
- n, so that organic farmers can continue to protect their own livelihoods as they undertake to grow food in a way that’s better for the health of the
soil, the water, our health, and the health of the farm workers who would otherwise be dealing with all of the pesticides and non-organic fertilizers. So as you go forward, keep in mind the small but important ways that the Farm Bill is supports organics.
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The connections between the Farm Bill and pesticides are important but hard to see sometimes.
Pesticides are mostly regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), antibiotics are mostly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and when we talk about these fertilizers that can get into water and even cause fatal health problems like blue baby syndrome, it’s hardly regulated at all. So because the Farm Bill mostly deals with the USDA, it can often feel like these issues around pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics are not a Farm Bill Issue. I would argue that they are, and there are a number of ways in which the Farm Bill is paying farmers, and incentivizing farmers, to farm in a way which requires more fertilizers, more pesticides, and more antibiotics. To address that, we can talk about reforming that big chunk of the pie that Monica showed us earlier, talk about reducing some of the subsidies that are leading farmers to use more harmful practices, and talk about conservation programs that help farmers to do the
- pposite – and we expect that there will be a big fight this Farm Bill cycle around the money that’s available for these conservation
- programs. These for example pay farmers to plant buffer strips next to streams to that less of the runoff that is full of these substances
gets into the water supply. There are also some mandatory conservation requirements that most farmers must abide by to receive some of the big crop insurance and farm program payments, and I think if you’re talking to folks on the Hill, it’s important to make the point that these conservation compliance requirements need to stay strong and that they’re actually enforced. And the final thing on crop insurance: one negative effect is that it often helps the big, industrial farmers take more risk. So they might grow food on acres where they really shouldn’t be, and they’re growing using more fertilizer, more pesticides because we the taxpayers are subsidizing a lot of that risk. It can be difficult to the track but everything in the Farm Bill comes back one way or another to these public health threats.
What about pesticides? I’m concerned about the pesticides that may be in my family’s food.
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! Trump’s budget called for massive cuts to SNAP. This results in nearly a 30% cut to the program. It’s
- ne of the larger proposes we’ve ever seen in the
last ten years.
The cuts are achieved in part by a giant step backwards – they are replacing 40% of EBT SNAP with what the Presidential Administration is calling a “Harvest Box”. It’s a non-perishable food item box that would be basically administratively costly, inefficient, stigmatizing, and would not allow families to choose the foods that they
- need. There’s massive concern about these. The USDA
estimates the cost will be half the retail price, but the savings will not benefit our families, they will just reduce the cost of SNAP as a whole. That cost isn’t going to go back into additional programming or finding ways to increase fresh fruits and vegetables for families, or partnering with local farmers, or increasing the amount of money that low-income families get, it will just cut the budget. They are also allocating an amount of money for administering the program that would not even come close to the cost to carry out this plan. And because this program would need to reach families in remote areas, it will be more costly and less effective for rural populations.
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The President’s budget also makes a number of changes that would result in what they like to call “savings” and what we like to call “kicking people
- ff the program.”
Some of these include work requirements for “able-bodied adults.” These work requirements are the biggest threat to the nutrition title funding right now. The Administration claims that these changes wouldn’t affect children, the elderly, disabled, or pregnant women, but evidence from the past shows that when you put these strings on assistance, many more people fall through the cracks. The President’s budget proposes to also implement stricter time limits and raise the definition of elderly from 60 to 63 in order to make work requirements and time limits reach more people. One piece that’s especially new is penalizing large families by imposing an arbitrary cap that cuts off benefits beyond six people in a household.
These changes could result in tens of millions of people who rely and need the program being negatively affected and possibly losing benefits completely.
In general, presidential budgets seldom become law and are more often viewed as mere suggestions. So, while his budget is unlikely to become law, the spirit of his budget remains, and many of these provisions are likely to come up during the Farm Bill negotiations. We have yet to see what the actual language of the Farm Bill will be, but it will be no surprise if they try to have work requirements and restrictions, limits on adults who aren’t raising children, and even some type of changes in the food that people are able to purchase.
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Food Policy Action and Food Policy Action Education Fund fill a unique role here in Washington, and all across the country, to unite leaders across the food movement – because as you can see from just what we’ve covered today, these issues are interconnected and we need to make progress on multiple fronts.
When will the Farm Bill be voted on?
They may mark up the bill in committee as early as mid-March in the House of Representatives.
The Senate is moving more slowly. The Farm Bill expires
- n September 30 of this year, so they have to do