2012 farm bill

Understanding the Farm Bill: What's Organic Got to Do With It?

We’ve learned a bit about how Farm Bill programs affect producers of commodity crops, but what about organic farmers? Before we dive into that, let’s review just what “organic” farming really means.

What is Organic?

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Understanding the Farm Bill Starts Here: All Our Articles in One Handy Place

The 2012 Farm Bill, a wide ranging bill that covers sustainable farming, organic food, big ag, food accessibility, and much, much more, will affect each and every one of us. Sadly, most people don't understand what it is or why it matters, and even fewer feel empowered to get involved and make a difference. Over the past several months, Simple, Good, and Tasty has published a series of articles about the Farm Bill, attempting explaining the issues in basic, understandable terms. These include:

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Understanding the Farm Bill: Who Benefits From the Current Commodity Programs?

In my last Farm Bill post, I wrote about the argument for directly subsidizing agricultural production: farm income is erratic, and in order to keep farmers in the business of supplying the food and fiber we all need, they must be guaranteed an adequate income. Under the current system, farmers are given direct payments simply for growing an eligible crop, such as corn or soybeans. In years when prices fall below the target price for a particular crop, they also receive countercyclical payments. 

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Looking Back and Looking forward: Our 2011 New Year's Resolutions

In preparation for this New Year's blog post, I went back and read what I wrote last year at this time. (If you haven't read it yet, Shari's terrific, extensive 2010 good food recap from last week is well worth your time.) I'm the kind of guy who holds himself accountable, and I'm not about to make a bunch of new resolutions without seeing how I did on the old ones. Here are last year's New Year's resolutions, along my my own view on how we did: 

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Understanding the Farm Bill: Digging Into the Commodity Programs

Now that we’ve discussed nutrition and conservation programs in the Farm Bill, the time has come to direct our attention to the elephant in the room: agricultural subsidies. The commodity programs represent 15% of Farm Bill spending, which is $42 billion, the second largest Farm Bill allocation (you’ll recall that nutrition spending is the largest). And it’s a controversial topic that requires some careful consideration.

Since the commodity support programs are such an important topic, we’ll spend a few weeks on them. This time, we’ll try to understand how the commodity programs came to be and how they work, and next time we’ll talk more about their implications. 

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Understanding the Farm Bill: Good Soil and the Programs that Protect It

During the summer after my junior year of college, I worked on a farm near Postville, Iowa. That summer I spent many sweaty, happy hours harvesting pounds of peas, potatoes, spinach, cabbage, and nearly every other vegetable you can think of, but the farmer always said we were less in the business of growing vegetables than of growing soil. This statement might sound strange at first – it’s easy to think of farmers as producing crops and livestock to eat, use, and sell – but farmers are also charged with the equally important role of being stewards of the land. After all, good soil is essential for plant productivity, which forms the basis of our health and economic wellbeing.

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Understanding the Farm Bill: What's SNAP Got to Do With It?

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to help out at the Midtown Farmers Market in Minneapolis, one of the area markets that allows patrons to use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly called Food Stamps) benefits to purchase fresh produce. Seeing firsthand how Farm Bill legislation is put into practice was a great reminder of how something as seemingly arcane as the Farm Bill can actually affect our neighborhoods, and of the kind of improvements we can make in the 2012 Farm Bill.

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A Farm Bill Primer: Getting Ready for 2012

As a child of the Midwest, I’ve been surrounded by farms and farmers my whole life. Most of my immigrant forebears were farmers, and there’s a good chance that yours were, too. Although I’ve chosen a city lot instead of my grandfather’s alfalfa fields (at least for now), I’m quite interested in what will happen in the 2012 Farm Bill. The Farm Bill affects not just farmers, but everyone who eats -- and that’s all of us. The bill, with its grand scope and billions of dollars, will help define what we eat (and, thus, who we are) in thousands of subtle ways.

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Understanding the Farm Bill: A Citizen's Guide to a Better Food System

A couple of months ago, I was chatting with my friend Mark Muller, who runs the Food and Society Fellows program for the Institute For Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). I'd just gotten back from one of several meetings about food policy I'd attended with a variety of local dignitaries, politicians, and other movers and shakers, and I was frustrated by what I'd heard. Mark, as always, was a terrific sounding board, offering the experience and perspective of a man who'd heard it all before without becoming jaded.

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