“The greatest opportunity in a generation”: Grossi on the ‘07 Farm Bill

Yesterday I wrote about how Sierra magazine's food politics issue from 1994 had depressed me because of how little has changed. Well, I've been cheered up. A Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) talk I went to last night has given me hope that the next 12 years could see some tangible improvements in our food system.

The speaker was Ralph Grossi, a third-generation Marin County rancher who helped found MALT and since 1985 has been president of the American Farmland Trust, a national nonprofit focused on farmland protection. (That's him at left; he was looking sharp last night in a suit and tie.) His subject was next year's Farm Bill, which he called "the greatest opportunity in a generation to affect food policy in this country" as well as the biggest environmental appropriation that comes before Congress.

Now, federal budgetary policy is not something I've ever followed very closely before, but Grossi did an excellent job of breaking down the Farm Bill, and explaining just how important it is, without sending me to sleep. I hope I can repeat his achievement.

Basically, the Farm Bill is the authorization of $100 billion in annual federal spending. Half of that goes to nutrition programs, like WIC (for low-income women, infants, and children) and school lunches. "Nutrition is a bit of a misnomer — it has little to do with it except providing calories," said Grossi. (We've written about the dysfunctional relationship between the USDA's commodity support program and school cafeterias.)

Currently, only 3% of the farm bill is earmarked for conservation, to encourage farmers to address environmental issues like wetlands restoration. Doesn't sound like much, but it a lot more than it used to be, according to Grossi; however, three out of four farmers who apply for wetlands restoration grants, for example, get turned away for lack of funds.

Most of the rest of the money, $10 billion to $25 billion, goes to income-support programs for farmers, the so-called safety net, and a whopping 92% of those funds are spent in support of just five crops: wheat, corn, soy, rice and cotton.

And yet "the most exciting developments in agriculture are coming from people who don't get subsidies," said Grossi. "We do not think that's a coincidence." His comments reminded me of how some small farmers like to depict subsidy-receiving commodity growers as tractor-riding "welfare queens" — perhaps one way to sell this to Republicans in Congress is as a "welfare reform" bill.

Grossi said the American Farmland Trust is working with many, many groups on hashing out a collaborative approach to reforming the Farm Bill, so that nobody broke ranks and hashed out a deal for just their particular focus. The number of special-interest groups working on the bill this time is unprecedented, with some surprising new players joining environmental and conservation groups and small farmers: HMOs.

"I knew something was changing when I found out that Kaiser Permanente has a Farm Bill taskforce," he marveled.

Among the changes Grossi is working toward is the earmarking of $5 billion for a "green payments" program, which sounds incredibly cool. "The idea is to reward stewardship of the land" through a market-driven system, he explains. "Let farmers compete for that money based on how well they take care of land. We want to produce new crops — open space, water and air quality, wildlife diversity — and create a new market for them."

Other items on the wish list: To increase funds for research into sustainability, and to get a block-grant program for states. They would have to apply for the grants, and their performance would be charted to measure its success rate. States are best suited to determining what they need, Grossi said, and some of the items such grants could be used for might include developing farmers markets, encouraging CSAs, or investing in regional infrastructure. As those who've talked to Bay Area ranchers know, much of the infrastructure needed to support regional markets, like smaller meat-processing facilities, is gone or fast disappearing, which makes it really hard to sell products locally.

Grossi added that with oil prices rising, it was important to nurture opportunities for farming at the urban edge. He expects renewable energy to be a big new influence on the Farm Bill, and noted that rising demand for ethanol has increased corn prices, "which is great if you're a grain grower, but it's a problem if you're a feedlot operator." Dairy, beef, and pork producers, whose businesses depend on cheap, subsidized corn to feed their animals, are already struggling.

While the Democrats' victory last Tuesday was encouraging news, Grossi warned that it would have less influence on the Farm Bill than casual observers might expect and that change was likely to be incremental. One direct effect of the election, however, is that control of the agricultural committee would be shifting from the South to the Midwest, as Tom Harkin from Iowa, the ranking Democrat, is likely to be the new chair.

But farm politics is more regional than it is partisan. "It's stacked in favor of the status quo, whether you're a Republican or Democrat," he explained. And since the 2002 Farm Bill was the most generous in history, coming as it did after three straight years of budget surpluses, there would be a big battle to take any of that money away.

So, that's where we stand. And what can we do to encourage the above positive initiatives to be incorporated into the new bill?

Well, Grossi pointed out, some in the well-heeled audience probably know their Congressional representatives, and should talk to them. "After Tuesday, you're about to have a particularly powerful rep here in the Bay Area," he said to general cheers. "Nancy Pelosi will be determining committee assignments and steering legislation through. Make sure she knows how important the Farm Bill is to you, her constituents. She should be encouraged to think of a farm bill that really is different" — one that encourages the kind of agriculture we need more, not less of.

Newly reelected Governor Schwarzenegger should also be lobbied to be more involved in this Farm Bill, as "any sensible reallocation of resources could leave California a big winner," said Grossi. (California currently receives only a small proportion of the funds, because it grows few commodity crops.)

And of course, vote with your forks. "There's been an amazing increase in demand from consumers to know where their food comes from, who's growing it and how," Grossi concluded. "You're the ones who have to tell agriculture what you want."

Those who can should also open their wallets and support American Farmland Trust, so that we'll continue to have the opportunity to buy from small farms. There's a new rival for farmland: ethanol. As Grossi warned, "If we think we have competition for land now, the next 20-30 years will be like nothing we've ever seen before. Within a decade we expect 30-40 million acres to be devoted to [growing fuel for] ethanol."

More than ever before, farmland is disappearing at record rate, particularly in the Central Valley, where housing prices and California's unstoppable population growth are encouraging the paving over of some of the most fertile earth in the nation at an alarming rate.

"It's time we do for the Central Valley what's been done for Marin," said Grossi.

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