Congresswoman DelBene receives a sample CSA share from Local Roots Farm

There are a myriad of laws and policies at all levels of government which affect agriculture. Unfortunately, it’s easy for farmers to feel disenfranchised from engaging in advocacy because the issues are complicated, numerous, and shrouded inside the complicated systems that create policy.

To provide an opportunity for local farmers to connect to key legislative issues affecting agriculture, Tilth Producers of Washington, the Washington Young Farmers Coalition, the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group, and Local Roots Farm collaborated to host a listening session with Congresswoman Suzan DelBene on April 13th. We were fortunate to have twenty farmers and concerned eaters turnout on the coldest day of the month, and to have Siri Erickson-Brown and Jason Salvo, owners of Local Roots, and their employees Rawley Johnson and Sam Bowhay as great hosts for the tour.

Congresswoman DelBene is a great listener. Northwest Farm Bill Action Group Student Intern Danielle Gilmour reflected, “This was my first time meeting a congressperson, and I am so glad it was Congresswoman DelBene. She is approachable, attentive, and articulate.”

Local Roots employee Sam Bowhay welcomes Congresswoman DelBene to the farm alongside Siri Erickson Brown, farmer and co-owner of Local Roots Farm

After the event, we got further proof that the Congresswoman was listening: she has now signed on as a cosponsor of the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act. She also introduced her own piece of legislation asking Congress to include support for fruits and vegetables (a.k.a. specialty crops) in the next Farm Bill. We are delighted and grateful to see her step out and show support for local food systems this way.

If you would like to extend your own thanks to Congresswoman DelBene, you can reach her DC office at (202) 225-6311, her Bothell office at (425) 485-0085, or send her an online message here.

Congresswoman DelBene poses with 21 farmers and eaters at Local Roots Farm Listening Session, April 13, 2013

The listening session, modeled after last year’s Urban Farm Tour with Congressman Adam Smith, was organized in response to Congresswoman Suzan DelBene’s recent appointment to the House Agriculture Committee.

The event provided an opportunity to reach the Congresswoman and hear her views on four primary issues of concern to all the convening organizations. Each priority was illustrated with a stop at a relevant site on the farm. A summary of each issue follows.

Tilth Producers Policy Coordinator Ariana Taylor-Stanley discusses policies which help rebuild local food systems in the processing shed

Local Food Systems

The tour began with a peek into the processing shed where fresh produce gets washed, bunched, and boxed to go to market. We discussed the need to rebuild local food systems and Farm Bill programs, including the Farmers Market Promotion Program, Organic Cost Share Program, Value-Added Producer Grants, Specialty Crop Block Grants, and the Organic Research and Extension Initiative. Many of these programs are included in the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, which we asked the Congresswoman to co-sponsor (to great success!).

Conservation Programs

Congresswoman DelBene and Farmer Siri Erickson Brown in front of Local Roots’ new greenhouse, which is still under construction

Next, we looked at Local Roots’ new greenhouse, which was paid for in part by a Natural Resource Conservation Service grant, and discussed conservation programs. Farmer Siri pointed out that while many conservation programs like that one do help farms, others, like the Wetland Reserve Program which helps farmers conserve wetlands by paying them not to farm in wetland buffer areas, can take significant amounts of farmland out of production.

This moveable chicken tractor is part of a business run by Rawley Johnson, Crew Leader at Local Roots, which is helping prepare him to start his own farm

Beginning Farmer and Rancher Issues

We next explored Crew Leader Rawley’s laying hen side-project, which is helping him develop the means to start his own farm. Rawley wrote the business plan for this project in the WSU Extension’s Cultivating Success: Agricultural Entrepreneurship class (which many of the meeting participants had attended as well). This program is a great model for new-farmer training, and is the kind of program supported by the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP). The BFRDP also provided a low-interest loan which helped Jason and Siri to buy the property which comprises Local Roots Farm.

Amelia Swinton, Garden and Nutrition Educator at Solid Ground’s Lettuce Link program, discusses food security and the Farm Bill

Food Access

Local Roots sometimes grows more food than they have time to harvest. Right now, the over-wintered kale plants are producing an excess of kale “raab” or flowers. The farm works with an Americorps program which sends volunteer gleaners out to harvest excess produce to donate to local food banks. We didn’t get to see the kale raab as we hurried into a greenhouse to warm up, but we did get to talk to the Congresswoman about other Farm Bill programs which help urban consumers access healthy food, such as access to SNAP at farmers’ markets, the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program, and Community Food Project grants.

The event concluded with a question and answer session during which Congresswoman DelBene continued to engage with constituents, and spoke to other issues, including genetic engineering, food safety, and subsidy reform.

We appreciate Congresswoman DelBene’s support for sustainable agriculture and local farms. We are grateful she could join us for this event, and so happy to see her already taking steps to support our growers in Congress.

Congresswoman DelBene answers questions in the greenhouse

Guest post from Chrys Ostrander, Executive Director and Farm Manager, Pine Meadow Farm Center: A Charitable and Educational Farm.

Voice your support TODAY for SB 5123, establishing a farm internship program. This bill will help grow new farmers from the ground up. 

Please! Call your WA State Representative and also Speaker Frank Chopp and Rep. Pat Sullivan (Majority Leader).

DON’T WAIT! There’s not much time because the legislative session is about to end, but the bill is finished and has already been approved for a vote once. Your help is needed to convince the legislature that this bill is important and deserves a vote. Please ask legislators to pull the bill from the Rules Committee and pass it off to the floor of the House for a vote.

Here’s the information. At this late date, it’s best to CALL ON THE PHONE:

Find Your Legislator. Use this link to get the contact info for your WA State Representative: http://app.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/

What to say:

“Hi, my name is _______, and I’m calling in support of SB 5123, Establishing a Farm Internship Program. I’d like to urge Representative ______ to pull the bill from the Rules Committee and pass it off to the floor of the House for a vote.

This internship program will benefit Washington’s economy by training new farmers and helping existing farms to thrive. It has already passed unanimously in the senate. Please help make sure it has a chance to get to the House floor, where it has strong support!”

Background:

SB 5123 was introduced in the 2013 Washington Legislature to set up a pilot program to allow small farms in sixteen WA counties to take on interns, paid or unpaid, who would perform farm work, benefit from a structured educational program administered by the farmer and receive Workers’ Compensation coverage.

The small farm economy in Washington is experiencing growth and with that comes a higher demand for trained farmworkers. The internship pilot program that would be established by SB 5123 would improve on-the-job training for beginning farmers and farmworkers by requiring that the farms provide an educational component for farm interns. The educational component requirement is relatively simple for the small farm to comply with. The bill proposes that each participating small farm “provides a curriculum of learning modules and supervised participation in farm work activities designed to teach farm interns about farming practices and farm enterprises … [that is] is based on the bona fide curriculum of an educational or vocational institution; and … is reasonably designed to provide the intern with vocational knowledge and skills about farming practices and enterprises.” Such curricula are readily available on-line and can be modified by each farm to fit its circumstances. The bill calls for farm organizations and agencies such as WSU Extension, Tilth Producers of Washington, the Farm Bureau and others to offer assistance to participating small farms in fulfilling this and other aspects of their farm internship offerings.

More Info:

The bill is similar to a pilot program that had been in existence in Skagit and San Juan counties during 2010 and 2011 but has since expired. The new version would revive the pilot program and extend it to King, Whatcom, Kitsap, Pierce, Jefferson, Spokane, Yakima, Chelan, Grant, Island, Snohomish, Kittitas, Lincoln, and Thurston counties. An attempt was made in the 2012 legislative session to extend the pilot program to these counties and received strong support in the legislature but died in committee.

An official assessment of the first pilot project was submitted to the legislature in 2011. Although participation in the program was low (six farms participating, nine interns enrolled), the report concluded “Both the farms and interns are reporting high levels of satisfaction with this project. Their desire is to continue providing internships that are “sanctioned” instead of questionably legal ["flying under the radar"]. The farms and interns especially value the availability of worker’s compensation for interns available through the FIP project. Farmers have reported that the quantity and quality of the educational component of their internships has increased as a result of participating in the project. All of the enrolled farmers said that they would recommend the program to other farmers. Interns have reported high praise for the educational component of their internships.”

Traditionally, many small farms have relied on “informal employment” of interns or apprentices. Whether such arrangements are legal or not depends on the interpretation of unpaid internship criteria published by the WA Department of Labor & Industries (L& I) and are based on the U. S. Department of Labor Fair Labor Standards Act. As the number of jobs on small farms grows, the potential for a farm to run afoul of labor laws increases. A farm’s viability comes under threat if it becomes embroiled in costly and time-consuming compliance and enforcement disputes with L& I. A small farm lacks sustainability if it allows risky employment practices and unnecessary exposure to legal entanglements to weaken its “economic viability”, which is one of the pillars of “sustainable agriculture,”  Another pillar of sustainable agriculture is “social responsibility.” One of the reasons that gave rise to a social responsibility aspect in sustainable agriculture was the long history of worker exploitation in agriculture. While it is true that many informal employment arrangements on small farms are on friendly terms, there doesn’t exist the protection that legal workers enjoy in terms of on-the-job injuries or financial security.  An intern on a small farm is not allowed to remain an intern indefinitely; that not only violates the tenant that unpaid interns cannot displace wage-earning workers (L & I criteria), but it disrespects decades of hard-fought, worker-led struggles to impose minimum wage protections upon labor exploiters of the past. Minimum wage laws exist to protect the rights of workers to receive fair compensation.

Part of creating a revitalized, sustainable local food system, besides improving training for farmers and farmworkers, is increasing their security and stability by regularizing un-paid internships – a tradition that dates back ages. Senate Bill 5123 is an experimental step in that direction. Let’s urge the legislature to pass this bill so that we can assess its workability.

=====================

Below, criticisms of the bill are paraphrased and responded to:

Criticisms:

Interns should be employees, and they should be paid. Anybody can learn how to pick carrots or beets in ten minutes; after that it is NOT an educational experience.  It is unpaid labor. If a farm relies on unpaid labor to survive, then it is not a sustainable operation.

Response:

The bill does not prohibit interns from being paid, that is left up to each farm to work out, but farms would not bound by minimum wage laws in regards to farm interns. The Interns would sign an agreement with the farm that establishes compensation, if any. Payment can be made in the form of stipends, room and board, combination of same, etc. Even if the intern is un-paid, the bill makes sure it is not simply free labor. The internship will need to be an educational experience based upon an approved curriculum. The intern will be receiving value in exchange for the time put in on the farm and the farmer will incur cost in fulfilling the educational and reporting obligations of the program as well as paying Workers’ Compensation insurance premiums to the state. If anyone would like to see an example of the type of curriculum that this pilot program would be expecting from its farmer participants, I invite you to take a look at an example from the Cultivating Success program here (please take careful note of the licensing agreement).

An important thing that should be understood about SB 5123 is that the bill proposes a temporary pilot program that expires at the end of 2017. It is an experiment. It does not set up a permanent program. What it does do is modify and extend a very limited, earlier experiment that was reported by program participants– by both producers and, it is important to point out, the interns themselves– to have been beneficial. If the outcomes of this larger scale experiment were to be as positive as the first pilot program (the current bill calls for another detailed study of the pilot program to be conducted by L & I), then the citizens of Washington State could have a further discussion as to whether the program should be made permanent through subsequent legislation. I believe the pilot program should be afforded an opportunity to be tried with full recognition of the concerns that have been voiced.

While there is room for a farm to develop its own curriculum (approval of which would be required by L & I) and that curriculum could be of a more limited scope than the example given, it is important to note that the bill calls for the curriculum to encompass “learning modules and supervised participation in farm work activities designed to teach farm interns about farming practices and farm enterprises; … [that is] is based on the bona fide curriculum of an educational or vocational institution; and … is reasonably designed to provide the intern with vocational knowledge and skills about farming practices and enterprises.”

Any small farmer would take offense at the notion that “anybody can learn how to pick carrots or beets in ten minutes; after that it is NOT an educational experience.” First of all, to pick carrots and beets well takes far longer than ten minutes to teach (if the farmer has quality standards s/he wishes to maintain). Furthermore, providing a way for small farms to get un-paid menial labor is not the intent of the bill and a farm doing so would be in violation of the law. The intent is that the interns learn the full context within which the farm produces those carrots and beets– How are the varieties chosen? From what sources are the seeds procured? What are the planting dates? How do you manage succession planting or inter-planting schemes? What are the fertility requirements? How is the seed bed prepared? What equipment is used to plant the seed? How is it maintained? How is the irrigation managed? Where do the crops fit into the crop rotation plan? How are weeds and insect pests managed? What considerations must be taken into account to produce certified organic carrots and beets? How do you handle the crops post-harvest to ensure quality and food safety? What determines how and where the produce is marketed? These questions illustrate a tiny fraction of what farmers must know and practice to be successful. This knowledge is what is intended to be imparted to the interns who would participate in this pilot program if passed. There are few places where someone interested in learning the art of small-scale farming can absorb the full context of this knowledge reservoir like they can by working on a farm side-by-side with a farmer mentor. The intent of the bill is to foster the professional development of a new generation of farmers to supply the paid labor force for a growing sector of Washington’s economy, namely, the small farm.

It’s true that “if a farm relies on unpaid labor to survive, then it is not a sustainable operation.” This bill envisions a regulatory environment in which the hosting of interns, paid (with the possibility of that pay being less than minimum wage yet with Workers’ Compensation insurance paid by the farm) or unpaid, can become a regularized option for small farms. Passage would not encourage or condone any farm “relying” on unpaid labor.

Please contact your state Representatives to support SB 5123, the Farm Internship Pilot Program.

At a Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on April 18, 2013, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg announced that FDA intends to extend the comment period for the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) proposed rules by another 120 days. The comment period deadline was May 16, 2013, and with the extension, will now close in mid-September.

We are pleased with this decision as the two proposed rules, part of the implementation of FSMA, set standards that will certainly impact growers. Some subcommittee members expressed concern that the new regulations will place a significant burden on small entities, and that a “one size fits all” approach may force some producers out of the market.

Tilth Producers agrees with the need for an extension as it provides an opportunity for organic and sustainable growers to learn more and provide comments. It is a complicated rule, and while only 100 to 150 pages of the 1700+ pages of proposed regulations may be pertinent to our growers, the nuances and details take time to understand. We encourage all Tilth members to attend webinars and/or workshops hosted by FDA and others to learn as much as possible, and to provide comments to FDA.

Find more valuable information about the Food Safety Modernization Act on the websites of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) and the Organic Trade Association (OTA). Or attend an overview workshops hosted by WSU Extension or FDA.

View NSAC’s  FSMA 101: Overview and Background

View OTA’s  Summary of the Produce Safety Rule  

View NSAC’S  Am I Affected?

View OTA’s  Summary of Who Would be Covered by the Rule

View NSAC’S  Speak Out Today!

View FDA’s FSMA information homepage

Join us for a Farm-Based Listening Session with Congresswoman Suzan DelBene!

Saturday, April 13th, 10 AM – 12:30 PM
Local Roots Farm, Duvall

Share your thoughts on the Farm Bill and other federal policy issues that affect Washington farmers with our new House Agriculture Committee member, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene. Join us as we show the Congresswoman around a successful, working, direct-market farm in her district and talk about key issues. Not familiar with policy issues and want to join us anyway? Don’t worry – the event will start with a briefing on key issues!

Agenda:
10:00 AM: Policy issue briefing and walk-through
11:00 AM: Congresswoman DelBene arrives, tour
12:00 PM: Question and answer period

For more information or to RSVP, contact Ariana Taylor-Stanley: ariana@tilthproducers.org, 206.660.8958

This event is a collaboration between Tilth Producers of Washington, the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group, and the Washington Young Farmers Coalition. Funding is provided by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Update on Tilth’s top priority policy issue: restoring funding for the Small Farm Direct Marketing and Farm to School Programs!  The Senate voted this week to fund the programs with a total of $250,000 (good news!). But this is only half the $500,000 amount requested for the two programs (bad news).

Please take a moment to encourage your Representative to tell House budget writers to appropriate $500,000 in the biennium budget for the Small Farm Direct Marketing and Farm to School Programs.

1.  Call the Legislative Hotline, 1-800-562-6000

2. Tell the operator your  name and street address

3.  Leave this message for your legislators:

“I’m calling in support of the Small Farms Direct Marketing and the Farm to School Programs.  This week the Senate budget writers included a total of $250,000 for both programs.  We applaud their decision to fund the programs, but $250,000 is insufficient to do the important work of building a stronger local food system.

As the House leadership works on the budget it is really important that they hear from all of the members who support these critical programs.  Please take the time to make a personal request to Representative Ross Hunter and Speaker Chopp to fund the Small Farms Direct Marketing and Farm to School Programs at $500,000 for the biennium.”

4. Want to go an extra step? See if your Representatives (who you can find here) signed on to the letter in support of Small Farm Direct Marketing and Farm to School Programs here, and thank them if they have already signed on!

Thanks for taking action!

At the upcoming NOSB meeting in Portland, OR on April 9 – 11, 2013, there will be discussion and a decision regarding the Crops Subcommittee proposal to remove the current expiration date for oxytetracycline of October 21, 2014 and replace it with a new expiration date of October 21, 2016. As most tree fruit growers know, oxytetracycline is an antibiotic deemed an allowed synthetic material under the organic rules, and used to manage fire blight in apples and pears when other preventative practices are not sufficient to control the spread of the disease.

As many of you are aware, this topic has garnered a lot of attention in the organic community, especially here in the Pacific Northwest, where fire blight is a grave concern for tree fruit growers. Research is underway and has made some promising progress; it’s felt that alternative tools to oxytetracycline for fire blight control are possible with continued research. This extension is important becauses the loss of oxytetracycline in tree fruit production now, when research is making positive strides, unnecessarily jeopardizes the tree fruit industry and risks potential reduction of domestic fruit while opening up the door to increased apple and pear imports from areas where fire blight is not prevalent. Leaving growers without options during times of severe fire blight outbreak forces them to choose between devastating crop losses or using non-approved materials and losing organic certification.

At the Organicology conference in Portland, OR in February there was a special meeting to discuss the issues and recommendations. There was broad, general agreement to support the recommendation put forward by the Crops Subcommittee to allow this extension through the 2016 growing season. Echoing the opinion of others in the organic industry across the country, there was unanimous support for a complete phase out of the use of antibiotics after this deadline. This issue was also carefully discussed at the recent WSDA Organic Advisory Board meeting held in Ellensburg earlier this month, attended by several Tilth Producers members. From that very afternoon the national discussion regarding the continued use of antibiotics in tree fruit production changed greatly. Using hyperbole and scare tactics, national consumer groups have waged a “no” campaign, asking consumers to sign-on to their remarks to the NOSB demanding the two year extension of use be denied. It has been challenging to make our voice heard over this rhetoric, though the need for continued research and additional time is no less critical.

Several members of Tilth Producers have been involved with the national discussion around this issue, which was initiated as a result of discussions during the NOSB meeting held in Seattle in April, 2011. It was at that time that the NOSB made the arbitrary decision to extend use of oxytetracycline until October 21, 2014, extending it for two years rather than the usual five years under the materials sunset review provisions. Consequently, it was decided at the Board level for the Crops Committee to prepare a proposal on this issue, with related public testimony to be collected and presented at next month’s meeting.

We, at Tilth Producers, hold the mission of our organization as the guide for what we do and the policy positions we take: to provide education, networking and research to promote ecologically sound, economically viable and socially equitable farming practices that improve the health of our communities and natural environment. After reviewing the work and recommendations of the National Organic Tree Fruit Task Force, we believe that these materials can be handled safely and responsibly. We also have concluded that opposing the recommendation of the crops committee would not represent the majority opinion of organic tree fruit growers and have potentially devastating consequences to organic producers in this state. There are over 15,000 acres of organic orchards in the Pacific Northwest, with these growers supplying over 80% of organic apples and pears in the US.

We very much appreciate that not everyone will agree with Tilth’s position. We appreciate the steps that successful growers have taken to learn how to control this disease without relying on antibiotics for those high risk seasons when fire blight affects valuable but vulnerable trees. It is our goal to support and publicize critical research and outreach to improve the success of Washington growers to manage this challenging disease. We appreciate hearing from our members as you review this issue. Regardless of the decision at next month’s NOSB meeting we remain committed to providing organic farmers with the most up to date research and advocating for continued research to develop effective management strategies to manage this devastating disease.

To view our comments to the NOSB please click here.

What policy issues will Tilth Producers of Washington be working on this year? These ones!

Download a PDF of the 2013 Policy Platform here.

Local Food System Development: Budget Support for WSDA Farm-to-Market, Farm Bill

The budget for WSDA’s domestic marketing program, which helps connect small farms to markets via technical support navigating regulations on farm-to-school, marketing, and food safety, was completely eliminated in 2011. Tilth Producers has joined the Good Food Coalition in an effort to advocate for general funds to re-establish funding for these “farm-to-market” services. We will also continue to advocate for Farm Bill policies which strengthen local food systems if Farm Bill negotiations continue into the new year.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs): State GMO Labeling Bill

We will support efforts to pass a bill requiring labeling of GMO foods in Washington State this year. This bill will be introduced either through I-522, Citizen’s Initiative to the Legislature, or will be brought to the floor from the agriculture committee, as failed to happen in 2012.

Beginning Farmers and Ranchers: Small Farm Internship Pilot Program, Farm Bill

Tilth Producers supports policies which make it easier for new people to start farming. We will continue to support efforts to continue and expand the small farm internship pilot program which gives small farms access to Labor and Industries (L&I) insurance for their interns (the program was established in 2010 but was not continued by the legislature last year). We will also advocate for beginning farmer programs in the Farm Bill.

Farmland Preservation: Full Funding for the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program to Ensure Funds for Farmland Preservation

Tilth Producers is committed to working alongside federal, state, and local leaders and communities to shape legislation and implement policies that keep farmers on their land and make land accessible to new farmers. This year we will support the American Farmland Trust in an effort to ensure funds for farmland preservation are protected by fully funding the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program.

Research and Education: Support for Sustainable Agriculture at WSU, Farm Bill

Our state is a leader in organic agriculture education. We will continue to support policies which enable Washington State University and its partners to continue to prioritize offering curriculum and extension programs which promote sustainable agriculture practices. This entails working directly with WSU and supporting relevant Farm Bill programs.

Access to Fresh Food for Children, Seniors and Institutions: Food Procurement Policy for all State Agencies, Farmers Market Nutrition Programs

This year we will engage with an effort to pass a state bill establishing a food procurement policy for state agencies which would encourage purchasing WA-grown, healthy food. This bill would act as a model for non-governmental agencies to use as well. We will also help ensure that the Farmers Market Nutrition Programs, whose funding was nearly cut last year, maintain their place in this year’s budget.

Tilth Producers welcomes your participation and input on policy matters.

To join our efforts or express your opinion, please contact:

Ariana Taylor Stanley at ariana@tilthproducers.org

Anne Schwartz at als@fidalgo.net or 360-853-8449

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FcARQjdgc4

The Northwest Farm Bill Action Group (with Tilth Producers Policy Intern Ariana Taylor-Stanley) got together to mourn the death of the 2008 Farm Bill at the end of September. Now let’s ask Congress to get to work to finish the 2012 Farm Bill before 2012 ends!

From the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (with edits):

No more elections.  No more endless campaign commercials, debates, and discussions.

Finally, Congress is back on Capitol Hill – let’s hope they’re ready to get to work!

What’s on the legislative agenda for the lame duck session?   Together, we can make sure the 2012 Farm Bill is on that list.  Because there’s too much at stake for it to get left behind – including the local food systems programs that got voted top priority in the Tilth policy priority survey!

Yesterday the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition delivered nearly 22,000 signatures to Congress on behalf of over 50 organizations nationwide – including Tilth Producers! - calling for an equitable, sustainable 2012 Farm Bill.  But we’re not finished yet! It’s time to drive that message home.

Make one call today (and ask one friend to join you!), and together, we can make sure that Congress finishes their work on a 2012 Farm Bill – one thatinvests in healthy farms, food, and people; protects our precious air, soil, and water; and reforms farm subsidies and levels the playing field.

Making a call is simple and takes only moments.

Can you imagine the impact we’ll have with thousands of calls flooding into Congress in only one day?  We’ll be making a unified statement – one that Congress can’t ignore:  We want a farm bill done this year, and we want it done right. 

Thank you for all you do!

Northwest Farm Bill Action Group organizer John Fawcett-Long, Tilth Producers of Washington Policy Intern Ariana Taylor-Stanley, and U.S. Congressman Adam Smith discuss the upcoming Farm Bill at Marra Farm in South Park, Seattle

On September 4th, I (Ariana Taylor-Stanley, Tilth Producers Policy Intern) joined fellow organizers from the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group (NWFBAG) in hosting U.S. Congressman Adam Smith for a tour of Marra Farm in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood. Congressman Smith serves Washington’s 9th District, which will include part of south Seattle (including South Park) after redistricting next year. We met with him to share our priorities for the Farm Bill and learn from him about his priorities and predictions for the Farm Bill process.

Congressman Smith impressed us with an account of his history of support for sustainable agriculture issues in previous Farm Bill processes, and admitted that he has never voted for a Farm Bill due to concerns around these issues. He expressed support for the Senate’s draft Farm Bill, but echoed common concerns around the House’s ability to pass a bill before the current one expires later this month. If the House does one thing this month, he told us, it will be the Farm Bill. But he was uncertain that they would accomplish even that. (And we now know that the Farm Bill will not come to a vote before the 2008 bill expires on September 30th.)

We encouraged the Congressman to support five key priorities when (and if) the Farm Bill comes before the House. We illustrated each priority with a stop at a relevant site on the farm. Here’s what we saw and talked about:

• Subsidy reform: We stopped by a blueberry bush and used the blueberries v. blueberry poptarts comparison from the NWFBAG Farm Bill 101 presentation to talk address the importance of reforming agricultural subsidies
• Organic and sustainable agriculture: A glance at some floating row cover helped illustrate some of the sustainable practices which Farm Bill programs such as the Organic Cost Share Program and conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program support
• Local food systems: Marra Farm’s new hoop house, which enables immigrant farmers to produce hot weather crops from their countries of origin here in Seattle, demonstrated one technique for growing local food systems. We asked the Congressman to support Farm Bill programs like Value Added Producer Grants and the Farmers Market Promotion Program, which help local producers access markets
• Beginning farmers and ranchers: Walking past Marra Farm’s market garden, we discussed the need for training new American farmers and asked Congressman Smith to make sure the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program receives full funding
• Food access: Our last stop was the children’s garden, where we discussed the importance of Farm Bill nutrition programs (such as SNAP Ed, which funds classes for elementary students at nearby Concord Elementary in that garden) and which have already taken huge budget cuts

View the complete platform here.

Thank you to Congressman Smith and his fantastic assistant, Linda Danforth, for joining us! We look forward to working more with you on sustainable agriculture policy in the future.

Washington groups are collaborating to pass a ballot initiative (I-522) that would require all genetically engineered foods sold in Washington to be labeled as such.

Why label GMOs? GMOs pose direct and indirect threats to the health of people and the environment, and can contaminate neighboring farms, voiding organic certification. Consumers currently have little recourse to avoid them because it’s hard to tell which food products are genetically engineered and which aren’t. Read more at Label it WA’s website or at GMO Free Washington’s GMO Document Library.

How? Right now, teams of activists are busy collecting petition signatures to get the labeling initiative on the ballot. To get on the ballot, 10% of Washington voters have to sign the petition – over 300,000 people!

You can help. If you haven’t signed the petition yet yourself, you can find copies at locations on this list.

If you have a farmers’ market booth, farm stand, store, or just a big party coming up where you can collect signatures, email or call Policy Intern Ariana Taylor-Stanley (ariana@tilthproducers.org or 206.660.8958) and we’ll send you blank petitions, info sheets, talking points, and instructions on how to collect signatures. Or you can sign up to volunteer collecting signatures at the Label it WA website.

Thanks for your help!

Last month, I asked Tilth Producers members for feedback on what policy issues matter to them. 10% of our membership – 60 members – responded (including 3 lucky winners of a tee shirt, farm walk admission, and year of membership), giving us some solid data on our members’ priorities.

Check out this at-a-glance summary of the results:

After a marathon three day session, the U.S. Senate passed its Farm Bill on June 21st. The final Senate version includes several provisions to help small and sustainable farms, many of which Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell supported. Please take a moment to send an email thanking Senators Murray and Cantwell for supporting Washington family farming and organic agriculture. Their contact information can be found here.

Before amendments, the Farm Bill was estimated to cost approximately $970 billion over the next decade, which works out to about $23 billion in spending cuts. The most fundamental change from the previous (2008) Farm Bill is a major switch from direct payments to commodity crop producers (who grow wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, et cetera) to subsidized crop insurance.

Tilth Producers applauds the senators for including the following programs in the final Senate Farm Bill:

• Specialty crop (fruit and vegetable) block grants ($70 million per year) and specialty crop research ($25 million+ per year)
• Fresh Fruit and Vegetable program ($150 million) and Department of Defense Fresh program ($50 million) to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to schools
• Hunger-Free Communities grant program ($100 million over 5 years)
• Farmers Market and Local Food promotion program ($100 million over 5 years)
• Beginning Farmer and Rancher development program and rural development programs ($150 million saved by a floor amendment supported by Senators Murray and Cantwell)
• Crop insurance support for organic farmers (also saved by an amendment)

Below are disappointments from the Senate Farm Bill process:

• $4.5 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (food stamps), cutting benefits to half a million families by $90/month (despite Senators Murray and Cantwell’s best attempts to prevent this)
• $3.7 billion in cuts to working farm conservation programs
• Failure to pass an amendment (supported by Senators Murray and Cantwell) which would have made it explicitly legal for states to mandate labeling of foods with genetically engineered ingredients
• Senators Murray and Cantwell’s failure to support conservation compliance requirements for receiving crop insurance subsidies (included in final bill anyway)

While this bill includes important reform and the positive, incremental, program-based changes above, it does not steer the Farm Bill towards the coherent food systems policy needed to fundamentally shift the country’s farming landscape to one that is environmentally and culturally sustainable.

The Farm Bill will now go to the House for committee mark-up and a floor vote. This will be followed by conference to align Senate and House versions, and then the bill will be sent to President Obama for signing. Ideally, the new Farm Bill will be signed into law before the 2008 Farm Bill expires on September 30th.

Stay tuned and get involved as the bill moves into the House by signing up for our listserv!

Thanks to Tilth Producers’ advocacy work, in partnership with the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group, Seattle-area U.S. Congressman Jim McDermott has signed on as a co-sponsor of the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act.

The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act seeks to re-build local food systems through programs that support infrastructure for production, aggregation, processing, marketing, and distribution needs. It is designed as a “marker bill” – sort of a laundry list of Farm Bill programs that support local food systems, which legislators can show support for by signing on as co-sponsors, as McDermott has done, that isn’t intended to pass as a stand-alone bill.

Tilth Producers has been asking our legislators to co-sponsor this bill, along with the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act, for many months. You may have signed a postcard about these bills at our annual conference in November or posed with a sign for a photo petition. Rep. McDermott is the first Washington State legislator to co-sponsor the bill, but we hope others will soon follow suit!

Congratulations to all who participated in this advocacy effort, and big thanks to Congressman McDermott and his legislative staff!

Reposted from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition:

The 2012 Food & Farm Bill:  what’s going on this week?

The House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture is at work on its version of the 2012 Food & Farm Bill right now. (The Senate passed its version just a few weeks back)  Now is a crucial time for Congress to hear from you on what needs to be in the farm bill! The Committee on Agriculture has set up a comment box for constituents to submit their feedback – and it’s open to everyone!

Filling it out will take just a few moments – submit your comments today!

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• · America needs a farm bill that creates jobs and spurs economic growth - support programs like the Value Added Producer Grants Program by guaranteeing $30 million of mandatory funding per year.  VAPG provides seed money to help farmers innovate in agriculture and create jobs while securing a sustainable path to market-based farm profitability.

• · America needs a farm bill that makes healthy food widely available to all Americans - including schoolchildren!  We must provide flexibility for states to use existing food procurement programs to purchase fresh, healthy  food from local farmers and ranchers.

• · America needs a farm bill that protects our natural resources - protect the Conservation Stewardship Program from unfair funding cuts, and improve it by ranking applications solely on their conservation benefits. Farmers count on CSP and other conservation programs to conserve soil for future generations, keep water and air clean, and create habitat for wildlife – all while farming profitably.

• · America needs a farm bill that invests in the next generation of farmers and ranchers -guarantee $25 million per year in mandatory funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. We need a national strategy and commitment to support beginning farmer and ranchers entering agriculture.  With an aging farm population, now is the time to invest in the future of American agriculture by nurturing new agriculture start-ups.

• · America needs a farm bill that drives innovation for tomorrow’s farmers and food entrepreneurs - fund the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative at $30 million per year in mandatory funding.  Investment in agricultural research is vital to continued productivity and innovation in growing and diverse sectors of American agriculture, such as organic agriculture.

Tell Congress:  it’s time for a better farm bill!

Click here to submit your comments!

A huge thank you to all who attended, donated, and volunteered for our first ever policy fundraiser dinner party! The food was delicious, the attendees fabulous, and the fundraising bountiful. It seems our policy program will continue for another year!

Here are the guests, chowing down:

A close-up of the favorite entree, Laughing Crow Farm polenta with Blue Valley Meats sweet onion sausage, Seattle-grown garden greens, and caramelized onions:

And our featured speaker, Anne Schwartz, sharing Tilth’s policy legacy and inspiring all:

Please support our fabulous donors:

Nash’s Organic Produce
Applecart Fruits
Blue Valley Meats
Laughing Crow Farm
La Biondo Farm and Kitchen
Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery
Field Roast Grain Meat Company
The Essential Baking Company
Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream
Central Coop

Happy Spring, Tilth Producers! Some exciting, but very “wonky” news: the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), of which Tilth Producers is a member, has released its 2012 Farm Bill Platform!

You can view it online here. WARNING – it’s a big PDF.

You may have read last month about my trip to D.C. to attend the meeting at which the priorities in this platform were identified. Now that the platform has been released, I will fill in some more detail about what those priorities mean, especially to those of us in Washington State.

In a press release, NSAC staff write:

Farming for the Future spans nearly every title in the farm bill and reflects a comprehensive approach to farm policy reform that will –

- Create jobs and spur economic growth through food and farms.
- Invest in the future of American agriculture.
- Enhance our natural resources and improve agricultural productivity.
- Drive innovation for tomorrow’s farmers and food entrepreneurs.
- Make healthy food widely available today and for generations to come.

At the winter meeting, we set a course for achieving these priorities, that centers around a policy-making tool called a “marker bill”. American Farmland Trust provides this definition of marker bills:

A marker bill is a legislative bill that is used to introduce specific measures or issues into a larger legislative debate. While not intended to ever come to a vote on the floor, a marker bill is proposed as a “placeholder” for specific aspects of a larger bill. This allows legislators to include key provisions into the larger farm bill debate while it is still at the committee and subcommittee level. The more sponsors and cosponsors that sign on to a marker bill, the greater the legislative support for the specific measures that the marker bill represents, and the greater the chance that the specific measures will make their way into the larger farm bill.

Three key marker bills provide the focus for NSAC’s, and thus Tilth Producers’, policy advocacy strategy towards the priorities in this platform. They are the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act, and another soon-to-be released marker bill supporting sustainable agriculture research programs.

All of these marker bills support issues that matter to Tilth Producers members. We focused on the first two in a postcard campaign that you may have participated in at our 2011 Annual Tilth Producers Conference in Yakima. However, when I met with several legislators’ offices after the meeting in January, it was the third, the research marker bill, that caught the most attention.

Sustainable agriculture research matters to our legislators mostly because Washington State University excels at it and has succeeded in winning much competitive grant funding for this type of research. (Of course, Tilth Producers has been a driving force behind WSU’s organic and sustainable agriculture programs. The newest development in this area is an Endowment for Organic Research which will feature a Tilth Producers Fund.) We will continue working with our senators and representatives in D.C. to show support for sustainable agriculture research when the marker bill is developed. Stay tuned for updates on this topic!

This is a personal reflection by Ariana Taylor-Stanley, Tilth Producers Policy Intern, written January 25th, 2012

I’m writing this from a plane somewhere over the midwest as I fly home from the most meetings I’ve ever had in three days. I came east to represent Tilth Producers at the winter meeting of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a group working on federal farm policy which we joined in November to strengthen our own federal advocacy work. And after two days of that, I went to D.C. and lobbied, in one form or another, the entire Washington State congressional delegation. In one day – today! So, phew.

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition Winter Meeting

The NSAC winter meeting (which was kind of like sixteen back-to-back regular-length meetings) seemed to have three main purposes: 1. Educating the members present about the policy issues facing sustainable agriculture right now, 2, Deciding policy priorities for the year, and 3. Developing strategy to achieve the priorities. It’s a Farm Bill year (the Farm Bill is the single largest piece of federal food and agriculture policy and is renewed about every 5 years), so the policies we discussed focused heavily on that.

The cool thing about that dry-sounding list of purposes is that because we did all that, and because NSAC and its member organizations are well-organized, smart, and experienced, some of the things we decided to work on this week will become federal policy, and in turn some of the machinery keeping the industrial food system in place will weaken. Somewhere in America, this year or next or maybe a decade from now, someone who might otherwise have taken another path in life will decide instead that it really will work for them to begin a farming operation growing healthy food without chemical inputs. And someone else, living in a city on a tight budget, will discover they have means to buy that food that they didn’t before. Because 68 of us sat on our butts and talked for two days.

I’m feeling inspired – can you tell? So, now want to hear about the priorities we chose? I’ll be posting updates about all of them for the next few months, so we might as well lay it all out on the table now:

Policy Priorities
- Supporting the local and regional food system-building Farm Bill policies in the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act
- Supporting the beginning farmer-enabling Farm Bill policies in the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act
- Another yet-to-be released marker bill supporting sustainable agriculture research programs
- Preserving working lands conservation programs, like CSP, EQIP, and CCPI
- Making sure food safety laws don’t inadvertently make sustainable agriculture illegal

Appropriations Priorities
- Making sure “mandatory” conservation funding isn’t cut during the appropriations process (an increasingly common practice known as CHIMPS – CHange In Mandatory Program Spending)
- Funding the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE)
- Funding the Value Added Producer Grants Program (VAPG)
- Funding the Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) which enforces fair competition rules for the livestock industry

I know when I look at this highly technical and acronym-ridden list, it’s hard to envision it all adding up to the truly sustainable food future those in that room held as a common vision. After we decided on these priorities, it came time to discuss how we will decide, after the Farm Bill gets written, whether to endorse it as a coalition or not. The Farm Bill is an incredibly complicated and disjointed piece of policy, full of all sorts of issues. How many wins are enough? How many losses too many?

As a seasoned advocate in the room cynically pointed out, “every Farm Bill is a failure when looked at in terms of the world we want to achieve”. In the same sense, no matter how we tally the score at this point, industrial agriculture is ahead. That didn’t happen overnight, and neither will the resurgence of sustainable ag. But hey – we’re on our way! And now I know how it’s done.

Lobby Day

I left the beautiful retreat center in Maryland where we came through all these deliberations early this morning for five in-person meetings with and six letter deliveries to the senators and congresspeople who represent Washington State. This was my third time lobbying in D.C. and my first time doing it without anyone else along with me. My first meeting, with Norm Dicks’ agriculture legislative assistant, went okay – I was a little shy and didn’t connect real well with the staffer, he was unfamiliar with the marker bills (the first two above) I brought in asking for co-sponsorship, and the meeting ended quickly.

Then I met with Senator Maria Cantwell. And I don’t mean her ag aide, although he was there, too. She had a constituent coffee scheduled that happened to coincide with my one day in D.C. so I went, expecting to have 30 seconds to make a quick pitch while she shook my hand for a picture. As it turned out, only four other constituents came to the coffee: a couple concerned about a biomass mill polluting their town, an advocate for better domestic violence intervention services for men, and a man showing his Australian nephew the American political process. So I got about five minutes to speak directly with the Senator about the importance of sustainable local food systems!

She gets it. Not only did she tell me she shops at PCC, she even articulated the connection between eating healthy, organic food and decreased health care costs. She told a story about losing a friend to brain cancer, the cause of which her doctors attributed to “pesticides”. And since her update to the group had focused heavily on jobs, we talked about the importance of ag in the Washington State economy and how improving our local food infrastructure and supporting beginning farmers would create more jobs. What’s more, Paul Wolfe, her ag aide who I met with earlier this month in Olympia (long story), chimed in to help explain and promote the marker bills. I think she may co-sponsor one or both – fingers crossed!

Speaking with Maria Cantwell, I grew up a little. I got over my general star-struckness at being in D.C. and talking with people in government, and found myself able to really just chat about issues that matter to me. All my following meetings were relaxed, friendly, and comfortable. Staffers (the rest of the meetings were with staffers) were frank with me about their own knowledge of the issues (which ranged widely) and the political feasibility of what I asked of them and I was able to respond in kind.

I am returning ready to harness this power that really, every American citizen has that we give away to corporate lobbyists way more than we should, to directly address our congressional representatives. If constituents ask, lawmakers respond. We’ve got a lot of asking to do. Let’s get started!