2023 Farm Bill Testimony

While we mainly focus on local climate solutions, we know we operate in the long shadow of federal policies on energy, food, and transportation. The farm bill is one of the most critical tools for food Justice in this country and everyone must pay attention to its potential and its impact.

The 2018 farm bill expires this year, on its 5-year cycle. We are hoping to see a new offering from the House and Senate in Congress before the end of the year. This is a tremendous opportunity to embed some significant climate action and climate justice into the agricultural sector. You can talk to your federal lawmakers, Congress and Senators, about what you’d like to see in the 2023 farm bill.

The vast majority of farm revenue last year went to "the top seven and a half percent of farms" Just as in many other consolidating industries, we are seeing a drastic shift in who benefits from agricultural supports. Secretary Vilsack has noted that we should be pushing for a farm bill that serves the “many and the most” not just the few.  Commodity supports often end up in the wrong places and this only fuels consolidation.

When I texted my dad recently, a small dairy farmer in WNY, he said the biggest struggle he has is that milk prices only go to the middle men and that’s the biggest thing to him that could save family farming. USDA has long known about this problem and it remains intractable. Farmers like him don’t want to be climate problems, they’re just exhausted and have so few resources, which often go to large operators.

At the same time agricultural operations are getting fewer, they are also getting whiter. In Indiana, according to UDSA, there are 134 farmers who identify as Black. 93,700 identify as white. That’s 700 to 1. 93% of US ag land is owned by white operators. The farm bill can and must address this inequity in every possible way.

We should be expanding the conservation elements of the farm bill, not threatening them. The IRA added close to $20 billion of supplemental money into four farm bill conservation programs for practices that sequester carbon. But programs like these need to be used to be truly accountable to the carbon math and prioritize equity and more sustainable crops.

In Indiana we see the popularity of emerging carbon markets as a tool for farmers to advance their growing techniques. But struggling small and minority owned farms are often left out of these benefits, which take time and resources to seek out, expertise to understand, and can discriminate against farmers of color. I’ve asked some of these investment managers how they plan to make sure farmers of color can participate in these initiatives and no one has had an answer for me. USDA should specifically set out to use the tremendous potential of carbon markets to directly benefit minority farmers through its own program or a partnership with one of many national credit issuers.

At ECI, one of our signature programs is the Thriving Schools Initiative, proudly an USDA funded program, that helps schools initiate a student-led sustainability project, often a school garden. Students, who often have had no hands on experience growing food, can learn a valuable cross section of skills and ideas while producing food from their own school yards for the cafeteria. We hope that the future farm bill can take our tiny gem of a program and scatter its seeds to communities across America, especially those in underserved areas with little or no access to fresh food and farming education.

Agriculture sits at a critical apex of climate responsibility and climate vulnerability: it is producing 10% of US carbon emissions, 40% to 50% of methane emissions, and 60% to 80% of nitrous oxide emissions-- methane primarily from intensive feedlots, and nitrous oxide from common manure, fertilizer application and manure management methods. Yet, every aspect of food production is harmed by climate impacts, costing $19 billion in insurance payments in 2022 for disastrous events alone. As agricultural land also occupies 44% of the US, this also places them in a necessary position to maintain regenerative carbon sequestration and myriad climate adaptation measures. And I want to make special note that I used the term regenerative sequestration, because the Midwest is about to become ground zero for carbon injection, which farmers should stand with us to oppose as a false climate solution designed mainly to aid big fossil fuel and dirty industries to live another day and not help our communities.

This farm bill should not only expand on existing programs like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to remove environmentally sensitive land from production and plant native grasses and other plants that benefit wildlife, it should augment our efforts to conserve *existing wetlands* as an important source of flood prevention and water quality management, and protect forest stands which sequesters carbon most effectively and prevent soil erosion. This program should structure its benefits to avoid small farmers ignoring the program because they think they’re “just a few acres” of habitat make it not worth applying.

In Indiana, CRP has protected over 1 million acres of land, providing habitat for a wide variety of species, but with changes to wetlands protections and continued logging for development, we have suffered setbacks from trying to protect the very habitats we say we can’t afford to lose.

There are many opportunities in the farm bill to tie environmental protection into agricultural support, whether that be insurance, credit, rural development, or commodity support. Every single program should now come with obligations to do something to fight climate, and assistance to carry that out. For too long we have been told that the ends of providing affordable food to Hoosiers has justified harmful agricultural means. Our state legislature has abdicated its responsibility to levy protections against the most dangerous run offs and emissions from farming. At the Indiana statehouse, only some agricultural operations have their voices heard. If the USDA does not speak for all of us, Indiana is unlikely to stand up for environmental and public health in agriculture. I’m tired of being told we can’t do both things: provide great food for all and defend our environment and future.

Our most critical dual missions to build a liveable future and feed America should be recursively reflected in each other.  The alternative is unimaginable.