May 20, 2013
|
This week, both the House and Senate Agriculture committees adopted
their versions of the 2013 Farm Bill. This is the latest move in the
long-running attempt to pass a “normal” 5-year farm bill to replace one
that was last passed in 2008. Several attempts to pass a farm bill in
2012 were
unsuccessful and the farm bill that is currently in effect is a short-term extension that expires in September 2013.
There
are some significant differences between the House and the Senate, in
both what their bills actually contain and in the process used to get
them through the committee. Both sides had an abbreviated process,
skipping the normal step of conducting a series of hearings to explore
various issues before writing the bill. But the Senate Agriculture
Committee took the streamlining even further, managing to discuss, amend
and pass its version of the bill in a little under three hours on
Tuesday. The House Agriculture Committee finished theirs in a marathon
session that took most of the day, wrapping up just before midnight
Wednesday night.
Now each bill (HR 1947 and S 954) has to go to
the floor for the whole body to vote on. The Senate is going first, with
leadership claiming they will do the Farm Bill as early as next week.
The full House may see their bill in June.
Here are some key differences between the two versions and things to look out for when the bills are on the floor:
1. Fair Markets for Farmers: It’s
been a long battle to get the USDA to stop the abusive practices used
by meatpackers and chicken processors to cheat ranchers and livestock
producers raged on in this round. The 2008 farm bill directed the USDA
to write rules to address commonplace abuses in the meatpacking and
poultry sector, and the meat industry has been on the attack ever since.
After years of fighting to get those rules in effect, the House Ag
committee’s version of the Farm Bill repealed the few provisions of the “
GIPSA Rule”
that remained, which prohibited some of the most abusive things chicken
companies do to contract poultry growers. The amendment also prohibits
USDA from taking any action to curb emerging abuses in the meatpacking
and poultry sector. The Senate bill does not contain this provision to
repeal the rules.
2. Country of Origin Labeling: Just
like livestock fairness rules, the meat industry has been out to kill
country of origin labeling ever since it was included in the 2002 Farm
Bill. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) and Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) each
introduced amendments to repeal mandatory country of origin labeling,
using the flimsy excuse that the World Trade Organization decision last
year meant the program must end. The USDA is poised to release
a technical change to COOL requirements that
address the WTO decision, and there is no need for Congress to get
involved in COOL at this point. The amendments were withdrawn in
committee (probably because the enemies of COOL did not have the votes
to win), but this issue will very likely come up again when the bills
goes to the floor.
3. Food Safety: The 2008 Farm
Bill shifted catfish inspection from the Food and Drug Administration to
the USDA. U.S. consumers and catfish farmers wanted to replace the
FDA’s lackluster inspection regime that allowed too many dangerous
imports, hurting catfish’s reputation in the marketplace. Ever since,
seafood importers have been trying to stop this from happening because
they don’t want imported catfish to have to undergo the more rigorous
inspection that would come with a USDA program. The House version of the
bill repeals the catfish inspection program at the USDA and would move
it back to FDA.
4. Organic: Organic agriculture
fared much better in the Senate version of the bill, which restores
funding for several “stranded” organic programs that expired last year,
including data collection about organic agriculture, organic research
funding and a cost-share program for newly certified organic farms and
processors. Only the research program is funded in the House bill.
The
biggest news on the organic front is that while critical organic
programs have struggled to survive the last year’s craziness in the farm
bill, both the House and Senate bills include language that would allow
the creation of an organic “checkoff” program. The USDA-created
checkoff programs fund research and promotion efforts for specific
commodities (like cattle, hogs, eggs, etc.) by collecting a mandatory
fee from farmers when they sell their products. Checkoff programs have
paid for some famous advertising efforts like “Beef: It’s What’s for
Dinner” and “Got Milk?”
Problem is, many farmers hate the
checkoffs because they think the funds (which come from their sales) are
not spent on things that actually help them but instead fund trade
associations that are often dominated by meatpackers and processors. The
USDA has a long history of poor oversight of the funds, which allows a
lot of industry mischief that doesn’t benefit farmers. Creating a
checkoff program for all organic products is controversial and we and
many farmers oppose it.
5. Nutrition Safety Net: Not
surprisingly, both committees took big swipes at the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps)
that provides a nutrition safety net for lower-income people. More than
half of the overall savings found in the House bill were created by
cutting SNAP by $20 billion. These cuts were five times bigger than the
still-too-large $4 billion cut by the Senate committee. The cuts would
squeeze people off SNAP largely by making it harder for people to
qualify for the program. This was a topic of
fierce debate in
the House committee and will be a major issue on the House floor. Last
year, the full House never voted on the Farm Bill, in large part because
of controversy over food stamps.
6. Commodity Programs: Both
the House and Senate bills end direct payments to farmers raising
commodity crops and shift them towards crop insurance instead of
government commodity programs. There was a big fight in the House
committee over the dairy program, one that is sure to continue when the
bill goes to the House floor. The House committee’s bill includes a
program designed by Ag Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D-MN)
that creates a program to pay dairy farmers when the margin between the
price of their milk and the cost of the feed they buy drops below a set
level. It also has mechanisms to discourage overproduction of milk when
prices are low. Dairy processing companies that love buying cheap milk
from farmers hate this program and fought hard to get it out of the bill
but were unsuccessful. The Peterson program is more popular with dairy
farmers, but doesn’t actually do enough to ensure that the price farmers
receive for their milk reflects their total production costs, according
to
family dairy farmers.
7. Conservation: Conservation
programs to protect fragile land, like the Conservation Security
Program, have taken a beating in the last several rounds of budget
cutting and Farm Bill extensions. This hasn’t really improved in either
the House or Senate bills; both sides reduced funding for conservation
by combining or eliminating existing programs. The Senate bill includes a
requirement that farmers receiving government support to pay crop
insurance premiums must be in compliance with conservation standards
(conservation compliance was already required for the commodity
programs). The Senate bill also added a focus on protecting bees and
other pollinators and includes veterans to the list of types of farmers
with designated conservation programs.
8. Beginning Farmers and Local Food: There
were some improvements in programs for beginning and socially
disadvantaged farmers, including a measure in the House bill to create a
Socially Disadvantaged Farmer and Rancher Policy Center and support in
both the House and Senate bills for the Healthy Food Financing
Initiative, which provides funding to help site retailers selling fresh
food in underserved communities.
9. House Amendment Attack’s States Ability to Regulate Food and
Agriculture: An
amendment by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) would effectively overturn state
laws that set food and agriculture standards that are higher than
federal rules. The broad measure is an attack on laws passed by states
to establish more humane livestock rules (the purported aim of the
amendment) but would also prevent states from setting stronger food
safety rules, agriculture product standards, protections against
invasive pests or livestock diseases or conceivably even efforts to
label GE foods. Federal law should set a floor not a ceiling on what
local citizens want in the food and farming systems; this language must
be removed as the Farm Bill moves forwards.
We’ll have more news
next week about when the full Senate will vote on the Farm Bill and what
you can do to make the bill better.
Patty Lovera is assistant director at Food and Water Watch.
- Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize
