Farm Bill Outreach

You can find your local congressman and senators listed here: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

Sample letter sent to Rep. Shuster (R) in my district, copy, paste & send it along!

As a young head of household and father of a four year old in your district, I must say I'm dismayed by early news of the 2012 Farm Bill. Now is not the time to sacrifice a young generation's health at the expense of subsidies to food providers. America and Pennsylvania are ready to support legislature enforcing tough health guidelines on school lunch programs. No longer can we have Food Interest Groups dictate that potatoes and corn are a healthy lunch, not at a time when America's youth face expanding waistlines & diabetes rates.

In addition to enforcing nutritional standards, I also suggest supporting the following:

• Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act (S 1773, HR 3286). This comprehensive bill supports the development of “infrastructure” such as local-based storage and small-scale processing of locally grown foods; increased ability of low-income families to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables from farmers markets, farm market stores, and community supported agriculture farms; and support to schools in purchasing more locally grown foods.
• The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act of 2011 (HR 3236) This bill addresses many of the barriers that young farmers face if they want to get into farming, such as limited access to land, high land prices, credit, business planning, and training.
• Community Agriculture Development and Jobs Act of 2011 (HR 3225). This bill supports urban farming and community gardening initiatives, getting good food to residents who often don’t even have grocery stores nearby.
• Preservation of Farm Bill funded nutrition programs, including SNAP Education and other SNAP spending. SNAP, the new name for food stamps, was already cut last year, so should be spared; and it’s a great way to connect low-income families to healthy, locally grown food.
• Protect working lands. This proposal from American Farm Land Trust would retain current funding levels for conservation easements to permanently protect farm land from development.
• Use the Grassley-Johnson language to put real caps on farm subsidies so that they don’t just help “big farms get even bigger,” and to oppose the “Brown-Thune” plan that, according to The New York Times, is being heavily criticized as a bait and switch scheme that defeats such capping efforts.
• Require farms that get subsidies of any kind from Farm Bill programs comply with provisions that protect the environment against soil erosion and damage of wetlands. Let’s not use taxpayer dollars to harm the environment.

To quickly surmise how young people view this issue, see below snippet. It's rather laughable.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/keenan/congress-declares-pizza-a-vegetable

Respectfully,

Michael Bartholow