GREEN THOUGHTS: Leafless along the trail

By DEBORAH E. LANS

CHATHAM—On July 7 dozens of farmers and other concerned citizens met with Congressman Marc Molinaro (R-19th) to discuss the soon-to-be proposed 2023 Farm Bill. The bill is reissued every 5 years and is drafted by the congressional agriculture committees. Congressman Molinaro sits on the House committee.

This year’s bill is expected to exceed 1 trillion dollars (including some $37 billion in mandates from the Inflation Reduction Act), the highest price tag in the bill’s history.

The bill typically exceeds 1,000 pages in length, so it isn’t surprising that, to most people, the contents of the mammoth bill are a mystery.

To begin, “farm” bill may be a misnomer. Roughly 80% of the 2023 funding is expected to go to “nutrition” programs like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps) that help low-income Americans afford food for their families.

SNAP eligibility and benefits vary depending on a blend of family circumstances. By way of example, in New York a family of three (with no earned income and no elderly or disabled member) would be eligible if its annual gross income were $29,940 or less; for the same family of three, but having some earned income, the limit would be $34,548. If that family had an elderly or disabled member and therefore dependent care expenses, the limit would rise to $46,068. The maximum monthly amount the family of three would receive is $740. Most would receive less—amounts that are generally agreed to be insufficient.

SNAP payment amounts and eligibility have been the subject of recent controversy. First, extensions of SNAP (which is typically available only for short durations) during the Pandemic were allowed to expire by Congress. In addition, broader work requirements were demanded by Republican Congress members as part of the debt ceiling compromise legislation. Starting in September, SNAP participants age 51 or younger without dependents or a disability will be required to work at least 80 hours per month. The age subject to work requirements will increase to 53 in October and 55 in 2024. The work requirements will not apply to the unhoused, to veterans and those aged 18-24.

Those opposed to the work requirements, like CD 19 candidate Josh Riley, argue that they further burden people who are already highly burdened, by literally depriving them and their families of the most basic of needs—food. Those in favor counter that moving able-bodied adults into the workforce is supportive of their future economic stability.

Paradoxically, the non-nutrition balance of the Farm Bill does not cover nutritious food production and increasingly ignores the needs of family farmers. Instead, it provides crop subsidies for industrial farms producing commodity crops like corn, soybeans, wheat and rice. And, much of the corn they produce isn’t for people; it is processed for use as animal feed, corn oil, starches, corn syrup and ethanol. A large component of the remaining funds pay for crop insurance, largely for the same commodity crops and generally not available to smaller farms.

In 2018 6.8% of Farm Bill funds went to conservation programs, but much of that funding pays for manure lagoons and other technology for CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations that cram thousands of animals into small areas); in other words, the funds go to implement measures to offset the pollution created by that farming method, rather than to farmers who farm in ways that avoid environmental degradation in the first place. Miscellaneous items such as the production of crops we might deem essential like vegetables receive the remaining 0.8%.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture depicted the 2018 spending like this:

CHART

A number of areas are not covered by the bill, including: farm and food worker rights; food safety; school meals; public lands grazing and water irrigation rights; clean air and water standards and enforcement.

As Sophie Ackoff, formerly a Hudson Valley farmer and now the Farm Bill Campaign Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, puts it, “the Farm Bill no longer has farmers as its primary stakeholders.”

While the Farm Bill owes its origins to the Depression era, when farming was a family business and farms were small, today it is widely acknowledged primarily to benefit mid-western and western industrial giants—be they farms, equipment manufacturers, animal feed producers or food processors—in the highly concentrated agricultural sector.

Agriculture lobbyists representing the big players spend vast amounts to influence the bill. According to Ms. Ackoff, in 2022 “the ag industry spent four times as much as the defense industry.”

Food system guru Daniel Imhoff, author of The Farm Bill: A Citizen’s Guide, calls the bill “a fully rigged game run by the immensely powerful farm lobbies and monopolies” of the industrial agricultural complex and “a corporate boondoggle.” Among other things, corn and soybean production are subsidized while vegetables are not, so that the bill “makes sure Americans are fed, but not necessarily nourished.”

Farm Bill critics note that the huge sums poured into corporate agriculture allow for the production of cheap, but not nutritious, food, heavily contributing to the nation’s health issues –obesity, heart disease and diabetes, that in turn costs taxpayers billions in medical expenses.

Local food writer Ruth Reichl has co-produced a film, Food and Country, that documents the struggles of smaller farmers and the many dysfunctions of the food system, including the lack of focus on food quality. As she noted in an interview with the Columbia Paper: “Eating is a learned behavior. No one is wired to eat pop tarts.” Yet, federal support of agricultural largely neglects making nutritious food affordable to eat or the farming of it a sustainable occupation.

Many see the Farm Bill as having great potential to influence climate change. Agriculture accounts for 11% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, through the use of synthetic fertilizers, the production of methane by cattle, and monocropping that depletes soils and leaves them lacking resilience to the floods and droughts we increasingly see, among other things.

Smart farming and organic techniques can alter that picture – storing carbon in the soil and renewing its resilience to volatile weather. Providing for the production of food locally also enhances food security, which many see as a national security imperative, and reduces the transportation costs embedded in food prices and thus borne by consumers and the emissions attendant to transport.

Columbia County farms in particular and Hudson Valley farms in general are not structured to benefit from much of what the bill offers—being far smaller and often “specialty” crop oriented.

Part 2 will address what our local farmers, and others, are hoping to see in the 2023 bill.