A Farm Bill for our future
By U.S. Sen. Angus King
(I-Maine)
After nearly two years of short-term fixes and back-and-forth negotiations, the 2013 Farm Bill is en route to the White House. The bill, which passed through both chambers of Congress with broad bipartisan support, represents a remarkable shift in our nation’s traditional agriculture policy away from outdated subsidies to more widely available crop insurance.
It supports local food networks, promotes healthy nutrition, strengthens our commitment to responsible land-use, and provides our most vulnerable citizens with continued access to food assistance programs and ends years of outdated subsidies.
Agriculture has deep roots in Maine’s cultural heritage and serves as a pillar of our state economy. Although I am not a member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, I know their work carries heavy significance for our state. Seeing that those interests are appropriately addressed is an important aspect of my job as one of Maine’s U.S. Senators. While the final bill is far from perfect, it does contain a large number of provisions that will benefit our food producers, our foresters, and our consumers.
Maine is home to many small and midsized farms. To ensure that the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) does not burden those farmers with unworkable and counterproductive regulations, the bill contains language – similar to an amendment I authored – requiring the Federal Drug Administration to conduct impact analyses of the produce safety rules issued under FSMA.
In recent years, Maine’s local food movement has experienced exciting growth, driven in part by an expanding network of farmers markets. The bill increases mandatory funding for the Farmers’ Market Promotion Program – which will go a long way towards promoting healthy, locally grown food.
Our specialty crop growers – including apple, blueberry and potato growers – will benefit from increased grant funding as well as the availability of subsidized crop insurance starting in 2015. In addition, the bill funds important research and training initiatives that will help our growers develop and implement new farming techniques.
Maine’s forestry industry also saw victories in the Farm Bill. It incorporates language from the Forest Products Fairness Act, a separate bill I co-sponsored, to ensure that all forest products are considered ‘biobased’ and eligible to receive a “USDA Certified Biopreferred” label in the marketplace. This will allow many of our forest product businesses to expand their markets and receive preference in the federal government bioprefered procurement process.
In addition, the Farm Bill will help put to rest a very difficult regulatory question that had been threatening the forestry industry for years – whether forest roads would be regulated like industrial pollution sources. I worked hard to ensure that the final bill included language similar to a bill that I cosponsored, The Silviculture Regulatory Consistency Act, which would ensure that forestry operations do not require EPA permits for simply implementing best practices, like constructing culverts.
Though the Farm Bill does some encouraging things for Maine agriculture, I was deeply frustrated that the bill does not mandate the U.S. Department of Agriculture to hold pre-hearings about restructuring our country’s outdated milk-pricing system. This pre-hearing process is critical for our dairy producers in Maine, as the current pricing system favors larger farms – such as those in the West and Midwest – where the cost of production is substantially lower. Sens. Susan Collins and Kristen Gillibrand worked hard to ensure that such a provision was included in the Senate version of the bill and I was discouraged to see it dropped in the final text after the conference with the House.
I was also disappointed by the level of spending cuts applied to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also called the food stamp program, – one of the most publically debated provisions in the Bill. The SNAP program has a tremendously positive economic and social impact – not just for recipients, but for the food industry as well. While the final text did avoid the drastic cuts proposed by the House version, I had hoped the final legislation would reflect the Senate bill’s cuts, which I believe more accurately addressed the need to trim spending and eliminate fraud while maintaining sufficient program funding.
It is worth noting, however, the bill does contain some good news for the SNAP program. The newly created Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive Program will both promote local agriculture and provide food stamp recipients with increased access to fresh and healthy foods. This will help SNAP serve as both an anti-hunger and pro-health program.
Throughout a painfully long negotiation process, the Farm Bill proponents never lost sight of their ultimate goal; crafting a long-term, forward looking Farm Bill that reflects the needs and priorities of farming, conservation, and forestry industries over the next five years. I am confident that their accomplishments represent a positive step forward for our nation’s agriculture policy and our economy.
