2007 Federal Farm Bill - Take Action

A local coalition that includes our community farmers’ market has been focusing on ways to change the federal Farm Bill to better serve both locally-oriented farmers and the current “brand” of the traditional family farmer who is producing material for our nation-wide system of food distribution. This coalition put together a letter to be sent by individuals to his or her members of New Mexico’s Congressional delegation.

The federal Farm Bill only comes up for a vote every five years. I believe that for some time, it has been used as a tool to enrich the coffers of a relatively few corporations at the expense of smaller farmers. Doing so has not only helped restrain locally-oriented farming – which is often organic in nature – but also greatly contributed to many of the health and environmental problems that our society is experiencing.

While the letter was written from the viewpoint of a resident of New Mexico, its points are just as relevant to the citizens of the other 49 states. I made a few minor changes in the letter prior to sending it to the members of my Congressional delegation. I will place the letter below, with portions highlighted in an alternate color that should either be deleted or changed to reflect your state of residence as needed. I urge you to become familiar with this piece of legislation and to make your voice heard on the issues involved. After all, what is more important to each of us than the food that gives us life?

Time is of the essence and your voice needs to be heard prior to the end of May 2007 to have any chance of affecting the Farm Bill.

Contact information for your Members of Congress can be found here.

Dear XXX,

I am writing to let you know that I care about your vote on the upcoming 2007 Farm Bill. I care about your vote because more than 35 million Americans, half of them kids, don’t get enough to eat. Yet, kids get the majority of their calories at school, which makes school lunches extremely important to their wellbeing. So what do we feed them? Tater Tots, chicken (parts) nuggets, chocolate milk, and canned fruit cocktail. School lunches are the dumping grounds for toxic food, and meanwhile one in two children will have diabetes by the age of 18!

I care about your vote because I worry about the loss of farmland and the fate of family farmers. In New Mexico over the last five years, we’ve lost over 200,000 acres of farmland and more than 500 farms! When farmland goes out of production, often the water rights are lost or transferred, which means that piece of land will never go into production again. As local farms disappear, our food security is threatened, especially as energy prices increase and our local production of food is compromised. Throughout the US, there are four times more farmers over the age of 65 than farmers under the age of 35. In northern New Mexico, the average age of our farmers is 59 years old. Who will replace this generation of farmers? How can we train new farmers?

I care about your vote because I don’t think it is right that our food system is dominated by corporations and commodities. It is crazy that almost 50% of all commodity subsidies went to just five percent of eligible farmers in 2005, which marginalized those who were producing locally-grown organic food and grass-fed meat and dairy products. I care because out of the hundreds of plant and animal species that have been cultivated for human use, the Farm Bill favors just four primary food groups: food grains, feed grains, oilseeds, and upland cotton. While millions of Americans are hungry, most of the subsidized food groups above are either fed to cattle in confinement or processed into oils, flours, starches, sugars or other industrial food additives. Now, there is the threat of diverting farms to the production of biofuels, too.

I care about your vote because something is terribly wrong when millions of Americans are obese and the Surgeon General is predicting that this could be the first generation of kids that won’t live longer than their parents. This is so because the Food Bill favors the mega-production of sugars and starches, rather than favoring regional supplies of fresh vegetables, healthy fruits, and nuts. Over the last 15 years, the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables has risen 40%, while the cost of dairy, red meat, chicken, sugar, and fat has fallen 25%. Our populace doesn’t have easy, inexpensive access to food that is good for them, but highly-subsidized highly-processed food is easily and cheaply available.

Farmland conservation programs need help, too! Conservation bills have been cut by 14% and wildlife incentive programs have been under-funded by 30%. The Conservation Reserve Program helps farmers reduce soil erosion, yet 28 million acres are being removed from the program. Wildlife Habitat Incentives, Wetlands Reserve, Environmental Quality Incentives, Farm and Ranchlands Protection – all of these programs need to continue to help farmers promote healthy habitat for animals and plants, reduce air and water pollution, and protect agricultural land from urban sprawl.

I think you’ll agree that things are pretty out of whack with our country’s Farm Bill. Now is the time to make our food and farm policies more enlightened, which is why I care so much about your vote!

Here are some of the things that I’d like to see better funded in the 2007 Farm Bill:

• Increase the funding for the Food Stamp Program so that those below the poverty level can access the more costly fresh fruits and vegetables and have a choice over eating the processed, high fat, low nutritional cheap food now flooding the market.
• Continue and increase the funding for the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program. It will help farmers and ranchers create permanent conservation easements, receive a one-time, up-front payment equal to the fair market value of the development rights and continued use of the land for agricultural purposes.
• Please don’t consolidate conservation programs! Each is important and deserves to be adequately funded.
• Provide more support for disadvantaged and limited resource farmers, so that farming is a sustainable lifestyle that others will want to do. In the West, 25% of farmers are minority, yet they get less than 1% of the funding. Be sure that the census accurately counts minority farmers.
• Allow schools to use federal money to have geographic preference to buy food. Right now, federal money doesn’t allow us to buy food from New Mexico producers. New Mexico kids should eat New Mexico apples, not those flown in from Washington!
• Provide funding to help us rebuild our agricultural infrastructure. There’s been a big push in New Mexico, for example, to grow wheat, but we have to ship it 300 miles to get it milled in Texas! We need to rebuild our local mills and processing facilities to make it easier to grow and sell local food.
• Don’t just subsidize the “big 5” crops (wheat, corn, cotton, rice, and soybeans). Farmers need support to grow fruits and vegetables, and be sure the funding has a geographic preference so that it gets to all parts of the country, including New Mexico!

I depend on you to ensure that our food system is sustainable into the future by voting NOT with the farm bloc but for the common person who needs good food, which is locally available to live a healthy life. This opportunity to change the direction of our food and farm policies only comes once every five years, so please make the most of it. Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

John Q. Public
555 Main Street
Anytown NY 55555

Note that the paragraph of the letter entirely written in blue print can easily be altered to fit the needs of those of you who do not live in New Mexico, thereby still making it a relevant example of the points illustrated.

I care about your vote because I worry about the loss of farmland and the fate of family farmers. New Mexico, for example, has lost over 200,000 acres of farmland and more than 500 farms over the last five years! When farmland goes out of production, often the water rights are lost or transferred, which means that piece of land will never go into production again. As local farms disappear, our food security is threatened, especially as energy prices increase and our local production of food is compromised. Throughout the US, there are four times more farmers over the age of 65 than farmers under the age of 35. Who will replace this generation of farmers? How can we train new farmers?

21 May 2007

Addition of 22 May 2007: I thought it prudent to note that this was not a letter that I would have written as to its form. This is not to say that it isn’t informative or that it doesn’t cover all/most of the necessary topics. However, it is not a good letter to express one’s viewpoint to legislators. This letter, of course, will not be seen by the politician to whom it is addressed. A staffer will be looking at it, trying to categorize its point so that he or she can simply note the viewpoint in a database. Before a vote on the issue, the politician will look at the tallies and this will influence how the vote is cast. As a result, when communicating with politicians, it is a good idea to treat them as you would small children. Be direct, be concise, and place what you want near the start of your communication. You can expound on it later, but your initial goal is to get your point across early and quickly. Now, sending this letter is better than not sending anything on the issue and I certainly didn’t have time to rewrite it line by line. However, whenever possible, following these guidelines will help one express a viewpoint such that it might actually count in political circles.