The Farm Bill: Is Eating Real Food a Thing of the Past

So, one year after the scheduled date, the farm bill discussions are soon to be under way after our government shutdown.  It sounds like all the same Republican driven cuts are on the table, slowing down progress and impeding the passage of this legislation.  But, well, that makes one wonder if it is in fact important legislation after all.

Will it do more harm than good?  Gigantic factory farms and agribusinesses operate under the extended old bill so subsidies are in place and things are growing, things that are highly sprayed, genetically modified and yet still resemble food good enough to eat.  

The advances in the bill, including the small steps toward making small family farming and organic farming affordable would help a group of farm workers now left out of the current system, struggling to make ends meet while they grow unsubsidized or barely subsidized crops.  The House seems to stand by its desire to undermine the poor, taking the food stamp program down to bare bones, saving $39 billion over ten years at the expense of the poorest Americans.

The Senate, on the other hand, would like to stop subsidies to growers earning over $750,000 per year, a measure not supported by the House and not embraced by House Agriculture Committee Chair Frank Lucas.  The senate also has other ways to reel in the subsidies, a measure that would hurt huge agribusinesses who have extreme market advantages under the current scheme.

So, in short, the House Bill hurts the poor, the Senate Bill hurts the rich, but whose bill would give us better food?  Which bill represents the interest of the consumer? The fact that this bill is inextricably tied to human health, disease and discomfort, and huge medical costs crippling our economy, is overlooked by all those involved.  The strongest lobbyists represent corn, soy, peanuts and rice; they don’t represent consumers, eaters, and the general population.

If it were to be done right, the Farm Bill would be a way to ensure healthy foods, creating incentives to be organic, to naturally grow foods without chemicals; it would create incentives to rediscover how to use herbs to stave off pests and to let some fields lay fallow to create natural nourishing earth in which non GMO seeds could be planted and flourish.  In the coming weeks, we should see developments as a compromise is expected.  Still, cross your fingers that the poor won’t starve and everyone else won’t be sick from the genetically modified, factory prepared subsidized soy turned into soy protein isolate, corn turned into corn syrup and and hybridized wheat turned into the two hour factory made loaves of bread.