Reactions to story from Open Left:: Global Suicide Pact: Amish Takeover

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  The Farm Bill

  http://www.robertkahne.com/?p=90
  4 days ago in Documenting My Audacity · Authority: 9

  The Farm Bill is this piece of legislation that is supposed to pass every 5 years and never does.  It deals with Farms and other things pertaining to the US Department of Agriculture, and often times is ridiculously long and arduous, not to mention very expensive.  Nonetheless, it is one of the most important things that Congress does.  There are a scant few things that every human does.  One is sleep.  Maybe the only other is eat.  We all eat, and the policy that brings food to our table (or our cars as we drive from place to place) deserves a little cred.  We should pay attention to this piece of legislation a little more than we do. Open Left had two really great pieces over the past 48 hours pertaining to the Farm Bill.  The first is from the Living Liberally series.  The post is about a movie, which is about asparagus.  The point driven home in both the post and the movie is that food politics and trade politics are especially interrelated, and this union feels effects from all sorts of other political subdivisions, especially the War on Drugs. That last sentence was very confusing.  Here is a quote to help you understand my muddled writing: “OK, so we’re totally losing on the heroin/opium front in the Golden Crescent, but aren’t we making some progress in our efforts to curb South American coke production? Well, funny story, actually; our campaign to convince South America to stop growing coca leaves and switch to legitimate crops hasn’t made a dent in the world’s cocaine supply, but it’s just about destroyed America’s asparagus farmers.” Sound interesting?  You should read the whole post. At any rate, the farm bill is done.  It was supposed to be done last year, but its done now.  Open Left had another post about that.  Their short synopsis about the farm bill work was really short though, and more in depth reading needs to be done before we really can understand this extremely complicated piece of legislation (which is even more muddled than my writing). Luckily, we have a blogosphere.  Smart people write blogs about food, too, which is fortunate because I don’t know nearly enough about it.  First: Mulch.  This blog is written by the president of the Environmental Working Group.   That’s good, because the Farm Bill and the environment are very connected.  Farming can be very bad for the environment if it is done in the wrong way, and I think its a good idea for the government to step in and make it easier for farmers to protect the environment while they do their job.  Second: Blog for Rural America.  This is the official blog of the Center For Rural Affairs.  That’s good too, because the Farm Bill explicitly deals with Rural America.  The fine folks at the CFRA advocate on the behalf of Rural America to ensure that the government’s policies do things like lessen poverty, support family farms, promote sustainability, and things like that.  Finally: Eating Liberally.  I mentioned the Living Liberally Series a few paragraphs ago.  This is their blog about eating.  We eat food, which comes from Farms, which are effected directly by the Farm Bill. One of the big criticisms of the farm bill is that it is overly bloated.  This is true (that is an opinion).  Subsidies and direct payments often go to huge farms who don’t really need the money.  In my eyes, and the eyes of many others, this money would be better spent if we helped to prop up small farmers and to promote conservation programs and organic/sustainable farming.   In the eyes of a few others, subsidies and direct payments need to go away and never come back because the government giving out any money for any reason is bad.  One of these people is the President.  So, since the most recent iteration of the Farm Bill still has a lot of these subsidies intact, he’s going to veto this piece of legislation. This veto may not necessarily be a bad thing.  The blog for Rural America I talked about earlier had a nice rant about why the farm bill needed a veto. Obviously, the CFRA and the President think that the Farm Bill needs vetoing for different reasons, but there is a post on Mulch about how the veto may end up granting some of the needed reforms prescribed by environmental and rural interests.  The drama has just begun, ladies and gentlemen. In short: the promised veto puts everything up in the air.  If the Democratic Caucus can get their ducks in a row, we may be on the road to slaying the giant of misplaced subsidies and direct payments, and on the road to sustainability and conservation.  However, if we don’t get everybody in line, we could end up with the same old crap we’ve been stuck with since 1992.  I hope that the victories won throughout the Farm Bill negotiating process can be retained through this process, but I really hope that more victories can be seen through this veto and the subsequent wrangling. You really ought to read the stuff I linked from this post.  It’s all really interesting.  I promise.

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