welcome to the northeast organic farm association of vermont food and fire policy update with dave rogers and greg stevens with a certification specialist with from minor panic farmers and i'm with dave rogers the policy advisor for enough of vermont and what we hope to accomplish here is to have a somewhat regular check and so that we can talk about issues in decisions that are being made at the state and national level that may impact both producer  agricultural products and consumers of ag products both in vermont and nationwide so hello dave hello so it's good it's good good to be here and the idea i think you know we need to get get  vermont for twenty eight years and taught by cultural policy as well as did science science related work and you know i i've always you know i'm interested in policy and have been for a long time because it determines i we always used to tell my students it's a really an ethical realm because it decides who gets what and why and when you listen closely to policy arguments about regulations and laws that's at the subtext there who's getting watt and why what do they deserve and and of course you have to get your voice and your argument out and fight like cats and you know this is a good time to have this first discussion because the farm bill just sort of went down in flames  congress just a couple days ago and we had been working with other organizations for several years on trying to get that farm bill with into shape and get it through congress so it was very disappointing but  but again you know as you listen to the debates it was about who gets what and why right well in terms of the farm bill that's that's our topic for today given that it's you know under discussion it's actually about a year overdue what what is the farm bill and why should people i shop people maybe not involved in farming directly be interested yeah you know some people even in agriculture particularly small scale farmers local food advocates like sometimes say you know it's got so many programs about nine hundred fifty billion dollars over five years goes to farmers goes to food organizations involved in trade international aid it's involved with research affects the price of food it affects the way we grow food affects the fortunes of everybody connected in the food system and so the farm bill is directly related to  course i used to the whole first part of the course was the history of agricultural policy how did we come up with these ideas that subsidize farmers or pay them not to plant to our man or you know provide food aid to other countries all of this right there's a very long history i culture has been in crisis in this country for hundreds of years because i mean the major reason is we have incredible natural resources incredible soil some of the implies some sort of official c no no no no we don't always do it efficiently but and you know and there's sort of a culture an ethic in the country of you know getting out there and you know making things happen so put that together and you had a series over over decades and decades of booms and busts good good weather at good prices everybody plows from fence post the fence post then you have a surplus that all crashes the farmers go on to the banks that we're financing and start to go under it had to be stabilized and normalized so these programs are an attempt to either get farmers to plant less or to expand markets or to give food away on it through international channels and so it's become like topsy you know in it's grown creation you know to include all sorts of programs and because because there's so much money involved in order to get in order to get the funds and programs to support farmers to deal with such crises you had to bring in everybody in society to buy into that even people who didn't have didn't know a farmer and lived in the inner city so so you know in over the last thirty years or more there's been this alliance between nutrition programs particularly people who need food because they ma you know they may be food insecure and unable to purchase their own food so the the supplemental nutrition programs and the farmers so it becomes an urban rural sort of alliance not alliance but sort of nutrition program but so that has been the balance the urban lawmakers say look we'll vote for these farm programs even though we don't understand them if some of the some of this incredible productive capacity out in agriculture is used to help our folks in the inner cities and in rural areas too so that's the alliance that's what has broken down over the last few days so currently we are still under that two thousand and eight farm bill which was called the food conservation and energy act ronnie and typically the farm bill comes up for renewal maybe every five years ago and portions of this farm bill worked on it through september thirtieth of two thousand and thirteen in january when congress passed the it's going to be two thousand and thirteen or beyond the next version of the farm bill what does that include that may be different from the two thousand a version and why it's so contentious well we're living in tough sort of fiscal times and plant direct subsidies those programs are being called into question because they cost so much and and really are wasteful so now those programs have been pared back quite a bit put some sort of an insurance approach to a two to ensuring the security for farmers has been put into place also an expensive program but also as i said much of the money in the farm bill is related to nutrition programs bill basically over an argument about how much was going to be cut from supplemental nutrition program so one thing that so all the programs are being cut across across the board in the house bill that was about forty billion dollars cut half of which was food stamp money which was just too much for urban and you know advocates for low income folks and they had enough votes to shoot the whole thing down so i would what's in this farm bill some some reform in existing farm programs to make them less expensive and to make them more sort of insurance based rather than direct subsidy based but the other programs are adequate insurance if they have a crop failure so that they're compensated in a way that's commensurate with the value of their crop fund the national organic program which basically is the umbrella under which all of organic farms operate  so those a small programs i mean organic food sales something like four percent i think of food sales in the country but organic research is like point zero four so you know we're getting a level and there are tremendous research questions out there organic farmers are trying to develop a new way to farm with fewer chemicals and inputs and it can be done but we need to understand more about soils relationship between plants and pests incredible scientific challenges and questions that are not being funded properly and but there are opponents to organic agriculture in the in congress  strong opponents well entrenched opponents who view this attempt to bootstrap an alternative food system if you will they regard that as something that should be sort of stamped out at an early point patients hey you know the major i talked about just a moment ago the incredible subsidies that we pay for farmers not to plant and to we also provide incredible subsidies hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subsidies over the years to pay farmers to clean up what they have sort of done to the environment to the water systems to lakes and rivers to the soils  so there are there's an incredible amount of money spent to sort of correct the wrongs of conventional agriculture in terms of the environment organic agriculture starts out with an ethic of taking care of the environment from the get go  so it makes sense to try to have people farming in this way i would argue that every day every nickel you put into supporting an organic farmers a nickel you don't have to spend cleaning up the environment on the other end and i think that's the way we should all about historically and what were associated with so dairy prices have been the dairy price program the dairy programs in the farm bill over the years have been incredibly complicated senator leahy quipped one time that they were only two people in washington became really unwieldy and sort of distorted the market so much that something had to be done and it was dairy farmers themselves conventional farmers who came up with a program that basically cut back on dairy supports if there was too much milk on the market and started to crush the milk prices because in recent years the price of milk has gone like this and it's just impossible to as a farmer any business person to plan properly when you have prices doing but in organic agriculture organic farmers have a much more stable income because they work directly with organic dairy processors who signed contracts with the farmers to pay the guarantee a certain price whether or not that pays the bills on the farm is another question but at least they can plan and that's a major reason why many farmers over in recent years have trance transitioned to organic dairy production that simply is a way to be able there's an awful lot of things attached from the food stamps to dairy prices to commodity prices insurance how does this whole process work how do we get how do we wind up with a yeah like with any bill really you know if you think back to with the farm bill the senate comes up with a farm bill the house comes up with a farm bill committee these are the egg committees and these are people who sit on the committees who are interested in agriculture or or these nutrition programs  that takes weeks and weeks with testimony and developing ideas and depending on who's in control in the in the respective chambers will determine who basically works their will in the comm refers to himself as the father of the organic food production act he had the he had that he created the organic food production act in the one nine hundred ninety four bill so he's a great champion and we're so fortunate to have him so the senate senate had lots of issues they cut food stamps as well by four billion which was controversial but in itself included the dairy reforms that we've been discussing and included some great things related to organic agriculture the house is controlled by republicans and the house agriculture committee as well with the exception of organic research funds there's nothing in the house bill to support organic agriculture in fact is there's a fair amount of animosity in the house committee toward organic agriculture which we don't have time to talk about but anyway that that that bill controversial controversial among democrats among low income advocates went to the floor in the house last week there were hundreds of amendments that were proposed none of the amendments that would have fix these problems of concern to us and the other groups that i just mentioned were included in and were not able to be voted upon several amendments were included that were very controversial and in fact you know made it even more difficult for low income folks to get supplemental nutrition weakened and that just broke the deal i mean it was a very tenuous and fragile it was very if the weather is going to pass to begin with but as soon as those amendments passed that was the end of it so the house will not pass it the house will not committee some members from each chamber are named to the conference committee and that's where the horse trading happens and what comes what comes out has to go back to the respective chambers for a final vote and then it goes to the president for signature it's in conference committee that you can get your last bite of the apple in terms of getting your programs included in the bill senator leahy would have been on that conference committee had there been a house bill and we were very focused programs that help and he was ready to do that and we may still get to do this and it's unclear whether the house i mean this this stuff has to pass and as i said everybody the pentagon we've got to get a farm bill there either has to be another extension which doesn't just kicks the can down the road right or there really has to be some concerted effort to resolve these issues particularly in the house and it's at this moment it's unclear whether they're going to have the political will to do that so that so if we go back to the house version and my understanding is that the senate version cut like you said the four billion from the snap program but the house version wanted to cut twenty billion and it was there really you know protecting farmers are stabilizing prices you know how might you defend that that spending well in the in the in the near term or in this present environment we just went through a historic the recession and was still climbing our way out of that hole and congress in fact is done very little and in fact a number of its efforts have been counterproductive in terms of of creating jobs i mean the federal reserve has been doing that you know should have been congress  so so we have more on employed people no paychecks coming in as a result of this environment the food stamps you know the amount of in food stamps has gone up tremendously because of the recession so you know this is a way to help people  the cowboy economy basically a letter rip let's let new ideas develop let new industries emerge let old industries die creative destruction is the way one famous economists called it and when we have you have people in such an environment they wind up sort of being left out by design really and so you know and we do a very poor job of training people in american education of retraining people locational training the cost of education is prohibited so we have people caught in a vise and with respect to many things rent car payments you name it and food and you know my view is that as bernie would say my view is that you know you have a system that sets people up for those makes them vulnerable so this is one one thing we can do so that's sort of the way i defend that i would much rather spend money on education and on job training and other programs then food stamps but i bet people who receive them would much rather have a job and it's another way to look at it and so what do you see what do you see coming up so the house bill so who knows what's going to happen with that we and you know what happens if we don't pass anything is it  anything happen to we keep it that well that when the extension on the farm bill that you mentioned earlier because we went through all this last year we couldn't pass unless the house i think we're the house didn't even what do we have for passing it this year or last year the house committee passed the bill and the leadership wouldn't even bring it to the floor for a vote because they knew they didn't have the votes total dysfunction i mean this is just you know another way to do to see the dysfunction in congress so what's go happen well they passed an extension last year to put a band aid on all this and keep the payments going in under the old programs to farmers and food stamps and always other programs we've just touched the surface in this discussion so they'll pass another extension on less they can get their act together before september thirtieth passed the house bill have a conference committee get that out get it approved and all signed by september thirtieth i would say chances i would make bets that that's not going to happen i mean i just got back from washington week and a half ago i joined a bunch of organic food advocacy organizations consumer organizations and others and we went to capitol hill and met with legislators on both sides of the aisle i met with our representatives and you know i when i came back i said it was both reassuring and scary the reassuring part was you know you some people get it and understand what's at stake you know well versed and others are just ideologues and you can't you know the eyes glaze over you can't get past that you know so we're going to be we're going to be you know this is going to be a forever fight but you have to show up you know one of my favorite sayings is woody allen's which says you know that eighty percent of success is just showing up you know we have to be there because i'll tell you  the people in the three piece suits of course are you know just out there trolling trolling around in the in the in the congress and people who are poor people who are fighting for some alternative vision small organizations like ours you know have difficulty sort of playing that game but that is the game and i think we've been pretty well vermont send some good people to congress so you know i deliver any message well for people watching at home or watching their computer how do people get involved let's say someone watching now is there still a role for someone for public involvement to have  only on national issues today we're talking about the farm bill but in the future episodes we'll talk about all sorts of things local and regional and state level so so that's one way to stay plugged in  learn about the programs in the farm bill and what the what the stage of discourse is we're just talking about how it might unfold in the weeks ahead one great place to go on the web to stay up to date is the national sustainable agriculture coalition programs and there are a number of others out there that i can mention but if you just start just start digging and you will find you'll find the friendship which you lock onto that thread before and build you'll find that it connects to