(The below is a reprint of Siena Crisman: Why Hunger's review on 7.18.12)
The last week (and in fact months before that) has had food, health and advocacy groups everywhere up in arms and actively supporting, berating, or debating over the 2012 Farm Bill. Often referred to now as the Food and Farm Bill, this piece of legislature passed out of the House Agriculture committee on July 12th, and since then all everyone can concentrate on is how this will be the worst farm bill yet. I am not inclined to disagree, as a number of the new riders alone give me cause for grief. However, I think that for the average american there's still very little understanding of how the bill applies to their lives and why they should pay attention or care at all about when and how it passes, and what it says. Siena Crisman of Why Hunger provided a simple and short, but poignant overview this week of why we should all care about the bill. I couldn't agree with her more, so I have reproduced it below.
1. The Erosion of Democracy.
1. The Erosion of Democracy.
The food system is one of the least democratic parts of our
economy. The Food and Farm Bill further consolidates the power of Big Food --
the huge food and farming corporations who make the decisions about what we
eat. Average Americans no longer have a say in how our food is grown, where it
comes from, what's in it, what's sprayed on it, where it's sold... the list
goes on. We've almost entirely been taken out of the equation. The right to
good food for all has become the right for a few to profit from food. That
doesn't sound like democracy to me.
2. The
food we eat is killing us.
US agriculture policy -- as spelled out in the Food and Farm
Bill -- supports this system of overproducing corn and soy, which is then fed
to cattle and turned into things like high fructose corn syrup and other
additives used in processed foods. The bill doesn't give nearly the same kind
of financial support to grow fruits, vegetables, or other nutritious foods.
These policies that encourage farming of too much corn and soy result in an
abundance of cheap and ubiquitous meat and processed foods. And now we have a
public health crisis of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other diet-related
illnesses , because we're all eating so much meat and processed food. For the
first time ever, the next generation has a lower life expectancy than its
parents - because of the food they're eating! Our farm policy should support
healthy food from healthy farms, not the raw ingredients for chemicals that are
slowly killing us.
3. Your
fellow Americans.
The biggest portion of Food
and Farm Bill spending supports the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
or SNAP, also known as food stamps, which has been a hugely critical safety net
for millions of Americans -- as well as one of the best forms of economic
stimulus, according to Moody's . The House Agriculture Committee's version of
the bill, passed last week, cuts $16.5 billion dollars from SNAP. This
translates to a loss of $90 dollars a month from the household budgets of
50,000 American families in the program. Almost half of SNAP participants are
kids. Why are we making it harder for struggling parents to feed their children
at a time of great economic hardship? SNAP is acting as designed, expanding to
meet growing needs during economically difficult times; it will shrink again
when the economy improves. Instead of reacting to spikes in SNAP numbers by
slashing the program and pulling the safety net from struggling families, the
bill should strengthen SNAP -- while we also focus on creating jobs, paying a
living wage, and fixing the broken systems that made the economy collapse.
