3 Farm Bill Extension Measures Filed In House - UPDATE: CBO Releases Score For One-Year Farm Bill Extension

To contact us Click HERE
Congress has run out of time to pass new Farm Bill, says House Ag Chair Lucas; measures seek to avert a dive off the "dairy cliff," provide drought relief to farmers...Senate Ag Chair Stabenow supports extension...
*Update at bottom of post

By Jerry Hagstrom 
Founding Editor, The Hagstrom Report

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., is urging passage of a one-year extension of the 2008 Farm Bill, but the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said on Sunday that House Republican leaders had filed three different versions of an extension on Saturday night, and that each is problematic.  In addition to Lucas' One-Year Farm Bill Extension, a Temporary One-Month Farm-Bill Extension was filed, as was a One-Month Dairy-Only Extension.

In a statement on Sunday, Lucas said the one-year bill is a result of “discussions” with House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Senate “colleagues,” but he did not say specifically that the others were backing the bill.

“Clearly, it is no longer possible to enact a five-year Farm Bill in this Congress,” Lucas said.

“Given this reality, the responsible thing to do--and the course of action I have long encouraged if a five-year bill was not possible is to extend the 2008 legislation for one year. This provides certainty to our producers and critical disaster assistance to those affected by record drought conditions."

The measures also attempt to avoid America going over the so-called "dairy cliff," which would cause an increase in milk prices.  Without a new Farm Bill or an extension of current law, milk prices could revert to levels set in 1949, per the last "permanent" farm legislation in the US.  Retail milk prices could potentially spike to between $6.00--$8.00 a gallon without an extension; current price levels are about $3.50 per gallon for non-organic milk.  The spike would happen gradually, a Department of Agriculture spokesman told Reuters.

An extension also means that farmers might get crop subsidies for another year; at certain levels, these were eliminated when the Senate passed a new five-year Farm Bill last June, and the House Agriculture Committee followed with its own version in July, though it never received a full House vote.

“The legislation posted is the result of discussions with ranking member Peterson and my colleagues in the Senate," Lucas said.  "It is not perfect--no compromise ever is--but it is my sincere hope that it will pass the House and Senate and be signed by the President by January 1."

In a statement issued on Sunday afternoon, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, firmly laid the blame for no new Farm Bill on the shoulders of House Republican leadership, while voicing support for an extension. 

“While the Senate passed a bipartisan five-year Farm Bill in June that cut subsidies and reduced the deficit, the lack of action by the House Republican leadership has put us in a situation where we risk serious damage to our economy unless we pass a temporary extension,” Stabenow said.

“If a new Farm Bill is not passed in the next few days, Agriculture Committee leaders in both chambers and both parties have developed a responsible short-term Farm Bill extension that not only stops milk prices from spiking, but also prevents eventual damage to our entire agriculture economy." 

Stabenow added that a new Farm Bill is "crucial," and said "if a new Farm Bill doesn’t pass this Congress we’ll soon hold another mark-up and just keep working until one is enacted next year.”

There has been no indication about when the extension measures will be brought to a vote.

Ferd Hoefner, head of the NSAC office in Washington, said in an email that the extension bills are problematic.

“The House Republican leaders filed three different versions of measures to extend the 2008 farm bill, a one-year version and two one-month versions, with the one-year version including disaster assistance funding and a new dairy stabilization program, and the two short-term measures delaying the so-called ‘dairy cliff.’ ”

“All three draft bills are sorely lacking and should be significantly amended or defeated,” Hoefner said.

“All three fail to take the minimum steps required to allow USDA to run the Conservation Stewardship Program for 2013. All three fail to provide 2013 funding for beginning farmer, minority farmer, rural jobs, farmers markets, and specialty crop research programs,” he said.

“The one-year version does provide funding for renewable energy programs and some but not all organic agriculture programs, but as with the two one-month versions, leaves the other critical farm bill programs that lack 2013 funding high and dry. Leaving out the newer, innovative, job and opportunity-creating programs from a farm bill extension is unacceptable.

“No one who cares about new farmers, healthy food, or rural job creation should agree to the packages as drafted,” Hoefner said.

Both the House and Senate Farm Bills passed over the summer had cuts in funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as Food Stamps, which has remained a stumbling block to getting a new bill passed.  The number of Americans enrolled in the SNAP program has continued to rise monthly throughout the Obama Administration, with the number for September at an all-time high.

##

Update, 6:30 PM:

The Congressional Budget Office on Sunday released its score for an extension of the 2008 Farm Bill until September 30, 2013.  Download the CBO score here [PDF].

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition also issued a revised statement of its views on the bill.

The NSAC said the score “shows 2013 funding being provided for many of the programs that received mandatory funding in the 2008 farm bill and that received mandatory funding in the Senate-passed and House Committee-passed versions of the now defunct 2012 farm bills.”

“While we question the way the bill was drafted, we are delighted it provides 2013 funding for beginning farmers, rural development, minority farmer outreach, specialty crop and organic research, direct farmer to consumer markets, and a variety of other programs,” said policy director Ferd Hoefner in a statement.

“We are still awaiting word as to whether the bill would also allow USDA to resume sign-ups and sign contracts with farmers for the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Conservation Reserve Program-Transition Incentive Program,” Hoefner said. “In our view, those are critical pieces that need to be included in a farm bill extension measure.”

_______________________________
Jerry Hagstrom, founder and editor of the best online, subscription-only agriculture and policy newspaper The Hagstrom Report, cross-posts at Obama Foodorama.  If you're not a subscriber to The Hagstrom Report, you're missing crucial coverage.

White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses To Speak At TEDx Manhattan Conference

To contact us Click HERE
Yosses will discuss Let's Move! and "Changing The Way We Eat" on Feb. 16...
On the heels of First Lady Michelle Obama celebrating the third anniversary of her Let's Move! campaign in February, Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses will speak about the initiative at the TEDx Manhattan 2013 conference. Though best known for stunning desserts and gorgeous creations like his Gingerbread White House, Yosses is deeply involved with the First Lady's national childhood obesity initiative and is a riveting public speaker.  He has given lectures on molecular gastronomy and Let's Move! at Harvard, as well as at culinary conferences around the US.  (Above, at the White House)

Titled "Changing The Way We Eat," the TEDx conference will be on Feb. 16 in New York City.  Tickets are $135 to attend, and audience members will be "curated"--selected by the organizers after applying--but the entire conference will be webcast for free.

Other speakers from the White House orbit include Chef Ann Cooper, a longtime school lunch activist who is one of the partners in the Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools project, with her nonprofit Food Family Farming Foundation; and Gary Hirshberg, the chairman of Stoneyfield Farm, who  was appointed by President Obama in 2011 to serve on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.  Among his many advocacy efforts, Hirshberg is chair and a founder of Just Label It, We Have the Right to Know, the national campaign to label genetically engineered foods.  The full speakers list.

Mrs. Obama will kick off the third anniversary celebration for Let's Move! during the week of February 9th, and will have a busy schedule, according to a White House aide.  More details will be released closer to the date.

CLICK HERE for links to all posts about Yosses, and CLICK HERE for links to all Let's Move! posts.  Visit LetsMove.gov for more information about the campaign.

*Photo by Eddie Gehman Kohan/Obama Foodorama

State-level data on children's poverty and nutrition programs

To contact us Click HERE
The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center this week released new resources about breakfast and lunch participation in Massachusetts schools.  A chart pack (.pdf) illustrates data describing the extent of take-up of nutrition benefits, and a summary graphic (.pdf) traces a wide variety of nutrition assistance programs from the federal funding sources to the state and local implementation level.

More generally, the Kids Count data center from the Annie E. Casey Foundation has a wide variety of state-level data resources for all states.  For example, here is an interactive map showing children's poverty levels by regions within Massachusetts (you can mouse over selected counties to see specific statistics).

Pork checkoff funds lobbying alliance

To contact us Click HERE
The federal government's semi-public checkoff programs collect mandatory assessments from producers.  Of course, it is illegal to use these funds for lobbying.

Yet, the National Pork Board (the pork checkoff program), overseen by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, is listed as an "Alliance Partner" for a National Pork Producer Council lobbying organization.  The NPPC is a private-sector pork industry trade association.  The NPPC's alliance web page explains the lobbying goal:

Pork Alliance dues are used to fund outreach for critical legislative and regulatory industry priorities, including foreign trade access, environment, food safety and animal welfare issues.

The dues mentioned in the web page are large.  The application form (.pdf) on the NPPC website says that the dues for becoming an "Alliance Partner" are $20,000.

I am not surprised that the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has filed a legal complaint with the USDA Inspector General.  The mandatory assessments are being funneled to a lobbying organization.  No matter what you think of the HSUS, it seems wrong for the federal government to use its power of taxation to place a finger on the scale of the public debate.

Pretty much everything you read about cancer from authoritative sources is likely to be worth taking seriously

To contact us Click HERE
Here is my paraphrase of the most important results from a study by Schoenfeld and Ioannidis in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

• Meta-analyses do fairly well at correctly stating their conclusions.  Meta-analyses are quantitative literature reviews that combine results from across studies, essentially increasing the sample size and breadth.
• For example, Schoenfeld and Ioannadis looked at 9 meta-analyses showing an association between consuming particular foods (I think of foods such as fruits and vegetables) and reduced risk of cancer. For all 9, the results were statistically significant at conventional levels (p<.05).
• Schoenfeld and Ioannadis looked at 4 meta-analyses showing an association between consuming particular foods (I think of foods such as processed meats) and increased risk of cancer.  For 3 of the 4, the results were statistically significant at conventional levels (p<.05).
• While the meta-analyses did well at reporting results, individual studies sometimes report results in their abstracts even when they were not statistically significant.  Some of these reported results may be attributed to random happenstance rather than real cancer effects. This is why it is unwise to change eating habits with every new study.  It is wiser to rely on the balance of scientific evidence connecting particular foods to cancer risks and benefits.

Based on these results, you may be interested in the excellent collections of meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews available from a well-respected source such as the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute of Cancer Research. The new paper by Schoenfeld and Ioannadis reflects fairly well on the type of research posted by the WCRF and AICR.

But, journalists will report the conclusions of the new study to say something completely different from the above.  In the endless search for novelty, journalists write each day that everything you previously believed about diet and health is mistaken.

For example, Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post's Wonkblog writes today under the headline: "Pretty much everything you eat is associated with cancer. Don’t worry about it." 

Food industry public relations folks will love this message.

To make things worse, Kliff garbles the statistical material (see the comments to the Wonkblog post):

Don’t panic yet, though: The vast majority of those studies, Schoenfeld and Ioannidis found, showed really weak associations between the ingredient at hand and cancer risk. A full 80 percent of the studies had shown statistical relationships that were “weak or nominally significant,” as measured by the study’s P-values.

This description seems to ignore the meta-analyses and also it seems to describe perfectly fine statistically significant results (p<.05) as if they were "weak or nominally significant."

Perhaps the authors share some of the responsibility.  Kliff quotes the author:

“I was constantly amazed at how often claims about associations of specific foods with cancer were made, so I wanted to examine systematically the phenomenon,” e-mails study author John Ioannidis ”I suspected that much of this literature must be wrong. What we see is that almost everything is claimed to be associated with cancer, and a large portion of these claims seem to be wrong indeed.”

As with climate change skepticism, people twist genuine heterogeneity in scientific results to cast doubt on both marginal claims and widely accepted claims alike.  I wish that neither journalists nor authors would cavalierly say that most of the literature is wrong, when even the new study shows quite trustworthy results for the authoritative meta-analyses that actually merit attention from the public.

Just for example, the balance of scientific evidence from WCRF and AICR suggests that fruits and vegetables reduce risk and that red meats and processed meats increase risks of certain cancers.  Such conclusions based on meta-analyses fare well in the new AJCN study.

The carbon footprint of food

To contact us Click HERE
Recently, I was in the market for a good layperson's summary of the environmental impact of food choices.  The one I liked best so far was the brief chapter on food late in the book How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything, by Mike Berners-Lee.

Berners-Lee takes measurement seriously.  At the same time, he is completely frank about how rough some measurements are.  He doesn't waste time figuring out every last significant digit.  Instead, he stays focused on the information that really matters for making sensible lifestyle choices.

Berners-Lee has a talent for explaining technical material.  As just one simple example, he has a delightfully clear explanation of a financial discount rate, an important concept for evaluating payback periods for investments (p. 188).  Other authors might be tempted to skip the topic, but Berners-Lee recognizes that the layreader can understand this issue, without needing any equations.

From the food chapter, here is a summary food tips:

• Eat what you buy. 
• Reduce meat and dairy.
• Go seasonal, avoiding hothouses and air freight.
• Avoid low-yield varieties.
• Avoid excessive packaging.
• Help the store reduce waste.
• Buy misshapen fruit and vegetables.
• Lower-carbon cooking. 

On related issues, I enjoyed seeing a presentation at the Friedman School's Wednesday seminar series last week by Susanne Freidberg from Dartmouth College, who spoke about Life Cycle Analysis (LCA).  Her most recent book is Fresh: A Perishable History.

Among other topics, Freidberg described the use of LCA in corporate sustainability initiatives, of which a leading example is Walmart's.  Although a major retailer won't say "reduce meat and dairy" or "avoid excessive packaging," I nonetheless find the Walmart initiative interesting.  Just for example, this video is blunt: "The raw truth is that the design of this system is unsustainable."  And it provides a nice visual explanation of a food product's life cycle.

FDA is missing deadlines for implementation of complex food safety rules

To contact us Click HERE
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been missing the implementation deadlines that Congress set in 2009 as part of the landmark FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). 

Food safety advocates have sued the agency because of the delays.  In a legal motion to dismiss (.pdf) filed today, FDA argues that the courts should not hold the agency liable for this failure to implement the law:

The sole remedy available for an unreasonable agency delay claim is for the court to compel agency action, such as by issuing an order requiring the agency to act, without directing the substantive content of the decision....  Although FDA has been unable to meet the aggressive statutory timelines for the seven new rules, there is no indication that Congress believed that strict adherence to those timetables is more important than careful consideration and development of these complex regulations to create an effective and modernized food safety system, provide clear guidance to the industry, and minimize later challenges or revisions to hastily adopted regulations. Accordingly, judicial intervention is not warranted at this time.

There is a certain sad logic to this argument! The courts should mind their own business, because the only possible punishment is to order the very same achievements that FDA already is failing to achieve.

I considered disputing FDA's claim about there being "no indication" of Congressional intentions for adherence to timetables.  After all, Congress did write these timetables into law.  On the other hand, Congress has not given FDA sufficient funding to meet all of its food safety objectives in the past year, and of course the next year looks even more bleak.  Although food safety advocates are unimpressed with the agency's excuses, FDA really does seem justified in implying that Congress has sent mixed signals about prioritizing food safety implementation.

I think we'll just have to be patient ... and go easy on the peanut butter.