- More closely align Farm Bill crop supports with USDA nutritional guidelines.
- Fully fund, expand, and refine the Conservation Security Program that rewards stewardship and sound farming rather than surplus production.
- Design subsidies to function more as safety nets, loans, crop reserves, and stewardship incentives rather than direct giveaways.
- Establish an effective cap limit on individual subsidy recipients and close loopholes to provide greater equity to all farmers.
- Shorten the food mile component of the current farming and distribution system by rebuilding the infrastructure for community-based and regional food supply chains.
- Expand affordability and access to high-quality healthy foods for everyone, particularly in rural and urban communities where resources and options are limited.
- Launch a national healthy lunch and fitness program that generates incentives for local and regional farms, features a salad bar and school gardening program in every school, and strives for meals made from scratch.
- Keep small farmers on the land by working for fair prices for all crops.
- Expand farm and ranchland preservation programs that buffer communities against sprawl, maintain habitats, and keep valuable agricultural lands in production.
- Provide expanded funding for the preservation (as well as strict penalties for the plowing) of remnant native prairies and functional grasslands.
- Shift incentives away from corn- and soybean-based feedlots and toward a grass-based livestock economy.
- Target research and incentives toward reductions in farm-related global warming emissions, such as organic and perennial agriculture.
- Include global warming reduction goals in Farm Bill titles whenever possible.
- Restore incentives, start-up loans, and respectability for future generations of farmers and food producers through beginning farmer programs.
- Establish conservation standards for Farm Bill-funded ethanol or other bio-based energy crops.
- Expand set-aside programs (Conservation Reserve Program, Wetland Reserve Program, Grassland Reserve Program) with nationwide goals for restoration and watershed protection.
- Fund more on-the-ground technical conservation assistance and enforcement.
- Increase oversight and accountability of taxpayer funded crop insurance programs.
- Promote growth in farmers’ markets throughout the country as well as farm-to-school, farm-to-hospital, farm-to-health care provider, and other farm-direct distribution arrangements.
- Increase funding for farm-scale and utility-scale renewable energy projects, with continued emphasis on conservation and energy efficiency.
- Expand research into energy-saving agriculture methods, including alternatives to synthetic fertilizers.
- Continue to work toward campaign finance and lobbying reform.
- More closely integrate and reward forest owners as part of the agricultural landscape.
- Include native pollinator habitat restoration and invasive species removal as regional and nationwide conservation goals.
- Integrate food and farm policy goals with other key legislative programs: transportation, energy, health, national defense, immigration, minimum wages, and so on.
Excerpted from Food Fight:
The Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill by Daniel Imhoff, ©2007
Watershed Media, distributed by University of California Press.
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