The House’s Farm Bill Is a Perfect Disgrace

The Washington Post | Reader Supported News | July 15, 2013

The House has finally passed a farm bill, and we’ll start our discussion by listing the legislation’s good points. It won’t take long.

The bill ends the wasteful direct-payment programs that showered $5 billion per year on commodity producers without regard to need. It abolishes permanent agriculture laws dating back to the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, thus eliminating the twice-a-decade threat of chaotic price increases that farm lobbyists used to extract new subsidies. And, for the first time in many years, representatives passed agriculture-support programs separately from food stamps, ending the old log-rolling arrangement between urban and rural delegations that insulated both programs from scrutiny on the merits.

Other than that, the bill’s a perfect disgrace. Each of the above-mentioned pluses is more than offset by a corresponding defect. Yes, direct payments would end, but they’d be replaced with a 10-year, $9?billion increase in crop insurance programs that would protect farms against not only natural disasters but also inconvenient market movements – at a time when U.S. agriculture is enjoying record profits. The irrational New Deal-Fair Deal-era default rules would end, but this new law would never sunset, locking in not only the crop insurance bloat but also costly, unnecessary sugar and milk programs.

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Organic Farming Sucks (Up Carbon)

Nathanael Johnson | Grist | Reader Supported News | June 13, 2013

We’ve known for a while now that organic agriculture is good for the climate: It does a better job at grabbing carbon from the air and turning it into soil than industrial agriculture, which often does just the opposite.

Last year, researchers reexamined all 74 studies that had looked at organic farming and carbon capture. After crunching the numbers from the results of these studies they concluded that, lo and behold, organic farms are carbon sponges.

This makes some intuitive sense: It’s generally the organic farmers who are most concerned with building up the soil – they can’t rely on synthetic supplements if the soil chemistry runs low, after all. And when farmers talk about building up the soil what they mean – on a fundamental level – is creating more dirt. The new dirt comes from plants, which, in turn, are made of carbon (in part). More topsoil means less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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Why Federal Efforts to Ensure Clean Tap Water Fail to Reach Faucets Nationwide

Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Laura Garcia, whose well water is laced with excessive nitrates, had to use bottled water until the recent installation of a filtration system in her sink.

FELICITY BARRINGER | New York Times | May 10, 2013

MONSON, Calif. — Laura Garcia was halfway through the breakfast dishes when the spigot went dry. The small white tank beneath the sink that purified her undrinkable water had run out. Still, as annoying as that was, it was an improvement over the days before Ms. Garcia got her water filter, when she had to do her dishes using water from five-gallon containers she bought at a local store.

Ms. Garcia’s well water, like that of her neighbors, is laced with excessive nitrates, a pollutant associated with agriculture, septic systems and some soils. Five years ago, this small community of 49 homes near the southern end of the Central Valley took its place on California’s priority list of places in need of clean tap water.

Today the community is still stuck on that list, with no federal help in sight.

Monson’s situation has parallels in places around the country, large and small, seeking federal funds under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Environmental Protection Agency distributes these funds to state agencies that are supposed to identify problems and underwrite solutions. By the E.P.A.’s calculations, no state has been as inept in distributing the money as California.

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Taping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime

Richard Oppel Jr. | The New York Times | Reader Supported News | April 8, 2013

In one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country’s largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks.

Each video – all shot in the last two years by undercover animal rights activists – drew a swift response: Federal prosecutors in Tennessee charged the horse trainer and other workers, who have pleaded guilty, with violating the Horse Protection Act. Local authorities in Wyoming charged nine farm employees with cruelty to animals. And the egg supplier, which operates in Iowa and other states, lost one of its biggest customers, McDonald’s, which said the video played a part in its decision.

But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. They have also drafted measures to require such videos to be given to the authorities almost immediately, which activists say would thwart any meaningful undercover investigation of large factory farms.

Critics call them “Ag-Gag” bills.

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US Senate To Consider Hemp Farming Legislation For First Time

Paul Armentano | NORML | February 19, 2013

For the first time in modern history, members of the United States Senate have introduced legislation in Congress to allow for the commercial production of industrial hemp. Last week, Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced Senate Bill 359 to amend the US Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana. The measure grants state legislatures the authority to license and regulate the commercial production of hemp as an industrial and agricultural commodity.

Senator McConnell is the Senate minority leader. He is a former opponent of hemp law reform.

“I am convinced that allowing [hemp] production will be a positive development for Kentucky’s farm families and economy,” Sen. McConnell said in a statement. “The utilization of hemp to produce everything from clothing to paper is real, and if there is a capacity to center a new domestic industry in Kentucky that will create jobs in these difficult economic times, that sounds like a good thing to me.”

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