Full and Fair Farm Bill NOW
The undersigned
262 groups from all parts of the country have joined together today to demand
that Congress develop and pass a full and fair Farm Bill this summer, without
further delay. A full and fair Farm Bill must include farm, food and nutrition,
conservation and rural economic development programs and commodity and crop
insurance reforms. It must also provide renewed and enhanced funding for the
now-stranded but critical subset of programs that assist the most chronically
under-served segments of agriculture and our rural and urban communities. The House and Senate should immediately
appoint conferees to work in an open and urgent fashion toward adopting a final
full and fair Farm Bill this summer.
The final bill
should include:
• All nutrition
programs, while rejecting all cuts or changes to the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) that would increase hunger or reduce access to
nutrition education for any
of the 47 million Americans who currently rely
on the program to meet basic food needs;
• Full funding
for farm conservation programs, enhanced and streamlined to better meet the pressing
and accelerating natural resource and environmental issues of our day;
• The cost-saving crop insurance and commodity
subsidy reforms included in one or both bills including payment limit reform,
national sodsaver, and conservation compliance re-linked to crop insurance-
plus additional reforms needed to create a strong, targeted
and cost-effective safety net; and
• Robust
provisions and funding to increase economic opportunity for the nation’s
diverse family farmers and ranchers, farm and food workers, rural and urban
communities, and Indian Tribes.
• Provisions to
ensure that a comprehensive farm bill with all titles will be updated on a
regular five-year basis as conditions in the food and farm system change.
We support
equity, justice, opportunity, and access across all titles of the Farm Bill.
Therefore, we support removing elements that make the bill less fair and that
weaken protections for consumers, including those in need of food assistance; or
of farmers, labor and the environment. These include provisions restricting
SNAP eligibility as well as those related to the Grain Inspection, Packers and
Stockyards Act (GIPSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Fair
Labor Standards Act and the Commerce Clause.
We further pledge to work with Congress to secure passage of a Farm Bill package that continues the currently stranded programs that
are so critical to producers and communities
around the country. These vital programs – representing a small fraction of
overall Farm Bill investments – support beginning, socially disadvantaged,
tribal, women, and veteran farmers and ranchers; rural economic development and
job creation; renewable energy; fruit and vegetable production; organic
farmers; local and regional food systems; farmers markets; healthy food access;
and community food and urban agriculture projects.
Completion of a
full and fair Farm Bill in 2013 is critical to the health of our recovering
national economy.
We strongly urge
Congress to act now to:
• assure access
to affordable healthy and nutritious food for all;
• support the
next generations of our nation’s farmers and ranchers;
• protect farm
and ranch land, forests, and other natural resources; • advance food and
agriculture-based economic development;
• invest in
sustainable agriculture and food system research;
• promote energy
conservation and renewable energy production;
• rebuild local and
regional food infrastructure and markets;
• ensure the
success of our nation's diverse producers, farm and food chain workers, and
communities in greatest need of the landmark programs wisely created by
Congress in the past several Farm Bills, programs which must be funded as part
of a full and fair farm bill.
Sincerely,
262 groups, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
