Wild Farm Alliance News

Now. Literally, Right Now. The Food and Farm Bill May Be Almost Over!

With this much at stake, we wanted to make sure you see the call to action.

Only once every 5 years do you have the opportunity to truly transform our food and farm system through the federal farm bill.

Last week the Agriculture Committee leadership proposed to rewrite the food and farm bill in 2 weeks - yes you heard that right, 2 weeks - this is usually a year plus process and they want to do it in 2 weeks behind closed doors?! This would be the fastest food and farm bill decision-making process in history - by November 2nd - it will be decided without your input unless you act now.

Please act today for a chance you have only once every 5 years to reform our food and farming system and protect our natural resources.

If you care about conservation-based agriculture, ecosystem functions, the health of America's soil, water, plants and wildlife; organic practices; local and regional food systems; and healthy food - now is the time to speak up. If you want to see a healthier, more secure, environmentally sustainable, and prosperous America – now is the time to speak up.

This proposal* would wipe out over 40 percent of the funding increases for conservation and environmental initiatives achieved in the 2002 and 2008 food and farm bills, setting the clock back and "un-greening" the farm bill.

It just takes a minute to call:

• First check if your Senator and/or Representative sits on the Senate Agriculture or House Agriculture Committee.
  
  
• If they DON'T SIT on these committees - you can still take action, but click here instead.
  
  
• If your Senator or Representative sits on either of these three committees: call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Senators' and Member of Congress's office: 202-224-3121. Or go to Congress.org and type in your zip code, then click on your Senators and Member of Congress's name and the contact tab for their phone number.
  
  
• If the line is busy, please leave a brief message on the voicemail.

The Message IF your representative sits on the Agriculture Committee: I am a constituent, calling Senator/Representative _____ to deliver this message (use one or more of these talking points):

• The proposed farm conservation cuts are too big and should be reduced. In particular, the Conservation Stewardship Program funding should be retained and Wetlands Reserve Program funding should be restored.
  
  
• Farm commodity program reform should include caps on the amount of subsidy any one farm can receive. Loopholes allowing multiple subsidy payments to single farms should be closed. Conservation requirements should be attached to all forms of revenue and crop insurance subsidies.
  
  
• The farm bill must reinvest at least $1 billion a year in innovative, job-creating programs for rural economic development, local and regional food systems, renewable energy, organic farming, and young and beginning farmers.

Thank you for taking action!

*According to published accounts, the leaders of the Agriculture Committees are proposing cuts of $6.5 billion to conservation programs, $5 billion to nutrition programs, and $15 billion to commodity subsidy programs. The conservation cuts would be on top of the $2 billion already made by Congress in the appropriations process.

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Fall 2011

The Next Farm Bill: Why It Is So Important to Wild Farm Alliance

The Farm Bill affects our farmlands and the conservation of wildlands, wildlife, and natural habitats. It supports ecological functions that benefit the farm and the wild, making room for pollinators and rare species alike that are otherwise disappearing at a fast rate. It also backs monocultures of corn and other commodity crops (about 30 percent), and enables business as usual for confined animal feeding operations by helping them clean up their messes that they should not have been allowed to create in the first place (about one percent). Rather than providing the means for the destruction of our natural resources, the next Farm Bill should re-direct our public commodity and crop insurance funds to support more conservation provisions.

Although we at the Wild Farm Alliance and many others ultimately seek a farming and food system that integrates conservation values and ecological principles into its core economic structure and cropping decisions, thus eliminating the need for special government programs to bolster such values, we recognize that such a long-term goal cannot be achieved overnight. There is still a need for the direct conservation benefits as well as the education value that these critical Farm Bill programs represent. We support them as part of a longer term education and evolution toward a healthy national agriculture, not as bandaids to conceal our persistent fundamental systemic concerns.



Wild Farm Alliance is running a series of Farm Bill articles by WFA Board members and staff that offer perspectives in line with our mission to promote agriculture that helps to protect and restore wild Nature. Future commentary will reflect on our participation and support of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition's platform, and include an excerpt from Board member Dan Imhoff's Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to the 2012 Food and Farm Bill. We'll also write about how it is essential to fund the food safety training initiative authorized by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, and how farmers must implement conservation-based farming practices if crop insurance funding is to be awarded. Additionally, commodity and insurance subsidies should be prohibited on all native prairie and permanent grasslands and other remaining native land in order to protect critical habitat and biodiversity.

The Farm Bill is About Wildlife Conservation
Congress is talking about the 2012 Farm Bill, and whether they will pass new legislation in 2012 or later is up for discussion. Every six years or so Congress enacts new Farm Bill legislation, the vast majority of those programs' dollars goes to food stamps, commodity payments, and crop insurance. However, about eight percent funds a large number of conservation programs, many of which are focused on wildlife habitat and wetlands. Eight percent sounds like a small cut of the pie but that still equates to almost $5 billion per year. That number dwarfs all other wildlife conservation programs, so the Farm Bill is critical to the conservation of wildlife habitat primarily on private lands.

The Farm Bill provides four easement programs: Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP), Grasslands Reserve Program (GRP), and Healthy Forests Reserve Program (HFRP) plus several cost share programs such as the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) and Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which takes highly erodible lands out of crop production and plants them to perennial grasses.  Even in times of austere budgets, the funding for these programs is still significant even if reduced from previous years. For example, the House recently appropriated for FY 2012 the following amounts (EQIP $1.4 billion, WHIP $50 million, WRP 185,000 acres, GRP 209,000 acres). CRP is capped at 32 million acres so enrollments are open when contracts expire and the number of acres drops below the cap. The Senate also recently appropriated for FY 2012 amounts less than previous years, but it is comparatively more conservation-friendly than the House. Greater details of these programs and some success stories can be found in the Field Guide to the 2008 Farm Bill for Fish and Wildlife Conservation (www.wildfarmalliance.org/resources/FBGuide1.pdf).

These programs are the cornerstones for protecting, restoring and enhancing private lands to provide greater benefits for biodiversity.  WRP has already permanently protected and restored over two million acres of wetlands, including large blocks of lands in the Lower Mississippi Valley that are over 10,000 acres in size and have allowed Louisiana Black Bears to return to landscapes that were dominated by soybeans and other crops the past half century. CRP has been a boon for grassland nesting birds. For example, 12 million ducks hatched on CRP lands in the Prairie Pothole region of the country between 1992 and 2002. Under the wings of those ducks were bobolinks, sparrows, meadowlarks and a host of other species. EQIP and WHIP are used to address the conservation needs of many other species from bog turtles to antelope and sage grouse to golden winged warblers.

As the debate heats up for the next Farm Bill, Congress will aggressively be looking for cuts to the federal budget. The Farm Bill is a likely target and in these difficult times should be looked at hard. However, the challenge is to make sure that conservation programs are not disproportionately cut. Any cuts should be equally shared by all Farm Bill programs.