| The 112th Congress starts tomorrow. Democrats out, Republicans in. In the House, at any rate. The Senate, which still has a Democratic majority, will continue to be subject to Republican filibusters on everything unless the filibuster reform proposed by Senators Merkley and Udall fixes that.
Over in the White House, Obama's looking for a new Chief of Staff, and one name that has been floated is Tom Vilsack, although most people think he's going to pick a Wall Street crony instead. If, for whatever reason, Vilsack leaves USDA, the name I've heard floated to replace him is Blanche Lincoln. Obviously, neither of these scenarios are good.
Getting back to Congress, we're now really getting close to the 2012 farm bill debate. It's here. Congress actually began working on the 2012 farm bill in 2010, but now that we've all got food safety and child nutrition behind us, we can all begin focusing on the farm bill as well. However, Frank Lucas (R-OK), the new House Ag committee chair, says he wants to put off really working on the 2012 farm bill for a while so he can first engage in oversight hearings.
I'm pretty sure that the EPA is going to be a target of those hearings. For whatever reason, Big Ag suddenly thinks that the EPA is going crazy and overstepping its bounds. The likely reason they say this is the EPA's action on carbon emissions. Big Ag has a major tendency to say "A (which doesn't bother me) leads to B (which I don't like), so I'm going to fight A." In this case, they are worried that if the EPA goes after emissions from power plants now, they might go after ag in the future
Another bit of bad news I've heard is the proposal to decrease the acreage enrolled in conservation programs. Several conservation programs involve paying farmers to NOT plant on areas with grasslands or wetlands, etc, to preserve wildlife habitat and to protect waterways from farm chemical runoff. Traditionally, conservation programs are underfunded, so planning to cut them seems absolutely insane.
The basis for their logic is an ongoing fight we've seen between sellers of commodities like corn, wheat, and soy, who benefit from increased commodity prices, and buyers of those commodities (like factory farms), who hate when commodity prices go up. I've watched this fight - which often centers around ethanol, the assumed cause of commodity price increases - for a few years with amusement. But it won't be funny if they settle their differences by taking acres out of conservation programs, which means plowing up grasslands and wetlands and planting them in MORE CORN.
Meanwhile, over at USDA, Vilsack has called for "coexistence" between conventional, biotech, and organic farmers. He doesn't like to see farmers suing one another, nor does he like one farmer dictating to another how to farm. And those are nice sentiments, really, but how do you propose to "coexist" when one farmer's GE corn blows pollen into all of the neighboring fields, some of which might be organic? Or when pesticide from a "conventional" farmer drifts onto a neighbor's organic crop? There's no easy way out here if you're looking for a way to coexist.
If you're hoping to reform the food system, here's what I think needs to be done now. I would expect roughly NOTHING from Congress. Nothing good that is. I think we need to keep our eye on Congress and make noise if they try to prevent the Obama administration from implementing any good policies. We also need to make noise if Congress puts forward very bad ideas in any upcoming legislation. I doubt we'll get much change for the positive in the farm bill, but we should advocate loudly for conservation programs.
I think we need to focus on making positive change in two areas. First, let's concentrate on the Obama administration and see if we can push USDA, the FDA, and EPA in good directions. You might also work within your own state for political change. And second, let's work on non-political reforms to the food system because that's probably where we'll make the most progress right now. Volunteer in your kid's school garden or in a local gardening group. Get involved in your community. Even just inviting friends over for a meal of fresh, ethically produced food is a great way to take action. Before people get active politically, often they need to get involved by falling in love with fresh food, or their farmers' market, or gardening. We need to engage more people like that, so that more people have a real stake in our movement. Then, when the political situation changes, we'll have more people on our side to speak out. |
