One more call for the Farm Bill!

Thank you for taking action on our alerts to help small farmers by increasing options for meat processing and stopping mandatory electronic animal ID!

Now, we’re asking you to make another call - this one to preserve conservation programs that protect our long-term ability to raise food in this country, instead of funding subsidies for the largest commodity farms.

There’s a proposal being discussed that would  raise commodity program subsidies by anywhere from $20 to $50 billion.  The USDA commodity programs include the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program, which makes payments to farmers when the average market value of a commodity (such as corn, soybeans, cotton, and peanuts – but excluding fruits and vegetables) falls below a price floor, or “reference price,” that is set in the farm bill.  The proposal would increase those reference prices to reflect recent peaks in the commodity market – which could primarily benefit as few as 6,000 farmers or 0.3 percent of farms.

This benefit for the mega-farms would be paid for by cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and cuts to money allocated to climate-smart farming practices and conservation programs through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

There is a need for programs that help farmers survive crises, whether from market fluctuations or weather disasters that are out of their control.  But the current programs are deeply flawed because they preferentially support large farms raising commodity crops - typically as monocultures using chemical-intensive methods that unsustainably mine our soils and water resources. This sort of support for industrial farms contributed to the alarming loss of 145,000 farmers and the continued trend toward farmland consolidation revealed in the 2022 Census of Agriculture.

In contrast, the conservation programs funded by the IRA benefit a wide range of farmers - from very small to large – helping to offset their costs to adopt more sustainable farming methods that conserve, and can even regenerate, our soils. Conservation programs such as the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) are far from perfect for multiple reasons – including the fact that they are perpetually underfunded. In 2020 and 2022, roughly three out of every four farmers who applied to CSP or EQIP were turned away due to a lack of funding!  Even with IRA funds available for these programs in 2023, a new report shows that there still wasn’t enough funding to meet farmers’ interest and need in these programs.

TAKE ACTION:

• Call your U.S. Representative; you can look them up here: Find Your Representative
• Tell your U.S. Representative: This Farm Bill should prioritize supporting small and mid-sized farmers to raise food in ways that are economically and ecologically sound, increasing the resilience and security of both the individual farmers and our nation’s food supply!

Sample Script:

Hi, I’m [your name], a constituent from [your district or state]. I’m calling to ask your boss to support a farm bill that invests in all farmers.

I'm concerned by the proposal to raise commodity subsidies, which would take billions away from conservation and nutrition programs and give most of that money to less than 1% of farms.  The commodity subsidies support the largest operations, incentivizing practices that deplete our soils while fueling consolidation of farmland in the hands of the few.  We need to reverse this trend, not increase it.

Instead, I urge my legislator to protect conservation programs that benefit all farmers, protecting the funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to help farmers adopt practices to regenerate our soils and protect our ability to raise food in this country now and in the future. Investing in conservation programs stops losses before they happen – thus reducing dependence on taxpayer subsidies – and keeps small and medium farms on the landscape. That means we keep more small businesses in rural America.

This issue is especially important to me because __ [I am a farmer / I'm a parent who is worried about my kids' future / my community faced a drought/flood/fire/etc. disaster recently / tell your story].

Thank you for your support!

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