Big Farm Bill Vote Next Week: Call your Senators!

Photo originally uploaded by Jason Hightower

The farm bill passed out of the Senate Ag Committee late last week and it's heading to the floor of the senate next Monday.  Read about what happened to the bill in committee here.

Bread for the World, Oxfam and other coalition partners are urging activists to call their senators by early next week  Unfortunately, the committee bill did little to reform the commodity payment programs.  Senators have a chance to strengthen the nutrition program (especially the Food Stamp Program) and conservation and rural development programs and make the commodity programs fairer to all our nations’ farmers. It is their turn to seize the opportunity to create a more just farm bill.

Call your senators today at 1-800-826-3688 and ask them to support the following amendments:

* Lugar/Lautenberg Amendment: The Lugar-Lautenberg amendment would broaden the agricultural safety net by making a free revenue insurance program available to all farmers. This would save billions dollars that would be used to invest in nutrition programs, specialty crop programs (improving research and marketing opportunities for the majority of farmers, who currently do not benefit at all from farm programs); critical conservation programs and the McGovern-Dole international school feeding program.

* Grassley/Dorgan Amendment: The Grassley-Dorgan amendment would establish a hard cap for commodity payments at $250,000 per household, helping ensure payments are targeted where they are needed. The amendment would also make sure that payments flow to working farmers rather than their landlords. The money saved from capping payments to the largest producers and landowners would be redirected into nutrition and conservation programs.

* Other amendments that add funding to nutrition; At stake are additional investments in the Food Stamp Program—especially the standard deduction level. There will be several amendments offered to increase funding for nutrition programs. Senators should support amendments that build on the improvements made in the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Read the full action alert.

 
Click here to let us know if you made the call.