Missouri Urban Farming Bill

Some legislation is moving in another Midwest state: Missouri. State Rep. Jason Holsman of Kansas City introduced HB 1848 which had the original intent of creating an Urban Farm Task Force. The Senate made some modifications to the bill, replacing the task force with a joint interim committee of five state senators and five state representatives to consider these aspect of urban agriculture:

(1) Trends in urban farming, including vertical farming, urban farm cooperatives, and sustainable living communities;
(2) Existing services, resources, and capacity for such urban farming;
(3) The impact on communities and populations affected; and
(4) Any needed state legislation, policies, or regulations.

The joint committee will be assisted by the "Urban Farming Advisory Subcommittee" which appears very similar to the original task force proposed in the original version of the bill. Significantly, the bill also includes the coordination of at least three public meetings that gather public input.

The Senate passed the Urban Farming Bill unanimously with these modifications, sending it back to the House for approval. According to Missives From Missouri, Rep. Holsman will support the modified bill, making final passage very likely.

Also from the Missives article, note how an urban farming initiative like this has earned such broad support:

The bill has received support not only from proponents of urban farming, but from large scale commodity farmers, including several members of the General Assembly who are farmers by trade. Expanding agriculture to the urban areas potentially opens up farming as a possible career choice to thousands of Missourians who would otherwise not have been exposed to the science. Supporters believe that many residents who came from farming backgrounds may return to the fields if exposed to agriculture within the cities. "Farming has been a way of life in Missouri for generations," said Senator Jolie Justus (D-Kansas City), the bill's handler in the Senate, "From life sciences, to conservation, to emerging urban agriculture issues; this study celebrates our true Missouri heritage."

That's right, not only do the commodity producers rightly do not feel threatened by this bill, but they support it.

(Just over in Cleveland, they are trying this experiment in urban agriculture: an abandoned mall as greenhouse. Any thoughts on that, Mel Simon?)

Surely, Indiana is ready for some action on the food economy at the state level. Missouri's HB 1848, Illinois's HB 3990, and Georgia's (proposed) HB 842 do not even require any spending. How we eat is at the intersection of our economy, our health, our environment. It's worth at least setting up a few committees to examine ways to improve business-as-usual.

Commodity field and policy

This New York Times article by farmer Minnesota Jack Hedin describes how current ag policy is weightily stacked against the non-commodity grower. Though the article is already two years old, the problems it deals with are current. Note how the commodity program holds its farmers in sway by penalizing them for growing non-commodity crops. It is acceptable for commodity farmers to grow nothing on their "corn base" acres, while as it is an extreme penalty for them to grow anything else.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

(Read the whole article here.)

These policies direct farmers' priorities. It is easy to see the connection between these policies, the crops that are grown, the cheapness of certain food products, the availability of nutritious food, the balance of our diets, and the health of our population. The Midwest is "ground zero" of these phenomena, but the effects are increasingly global.

From this perspective, it is policy that is driving so much of the irrationality in our food system. There is a trend within the local food movement to simply "think globally and act locally": be a gardener, buy local and organic, start a community garden, etc. These are useful and fun initiatives that are changing our urban landscapes for the better.

But the expansive monoculture fields that surround our towns in Indiana and throughout the Midwest are not going to change as a result of a local food movement. The fields are local to no one. Its clients are not you and me, but commodity traders and multinationals. We need new policies that simply puts them out of business, or more likely, directs their efforts into a new business.

Chickens and Georgia Urban Farm Bill

Yes, yes, this blog has fallen into an inadvertent hibernation. That happens with blogs. It's Springtime in the Midwest, so spending stretches of several hours online is less appealing now as it in, say, January. But we haven't stopped working on local food issues.

One story playing out here in Muncie, as it is in many, many perhaps into the hundreds, of municipalities across the country is whether keeping chickens within city limits should be legal. This Washington Post article touches upon several of the issues.

The Georgia House of Representatives is closing in on passing a state level urban farm bill package. HR 842 would "protect the right to grow food crops and raise small animals on private property so long as such crops and animals are used for human consumption by the occupants, gardeners, or raisers and their households and not for commercial purposes" across the state. These protections would preempt the often drawn-out, often sensational and tiresome city council debates over issues like chicken keeping. Enforcement would depend upon local nuisance laws that are already in place. This editorial from the Athens Banner-Herald sums up the bill.

Again, we keep turning back to the question: Why not Indiana?

Local Multiplier Effect

The local multiplier effect, as explained by Yes! Magazine:

The implications for a local food economy are obvious. It doesn't take a crystal ball to predict that the increasingly problematic energy inputs used by the commodity growers will soon make a more diverse crop acreage for a more local market a more attractive option for these growers.

Case studies in the local multiplier effect are the most convincing data I've seen in favor of the argument for government creating incentives for locally-owned businesses, and food business in particular. As directed by the 2008 Farm Bill, the USDA subsidizes a decidedly non-local commodity agriculture (corn, soy, wheat), driving down the price of food made from these crops, which narrows the growers' profit margins, which inflates the size of the typical acreage.

As an alternative, why not subsidize or at least create a few incentives for growing and distributing crops that result in healthier people and healthier economies? This alternative is increasingly going to be the only possible option. We will have the energy crisis to thank for that. Already, we are seeing the size of the average farm in Indiana is decreasing.

Sure, the more local model of agriculture and food economy is more labor intensive. That is the trade-off: less reliance on oil to grow food, more reliance on human sweat. Of course, this is a welcome trade-off because this means more jobs in rural areas and the potential to revitalize rural economies.

The Tragic Death of HB 1142

It sounds like the Agriculture and Small Business Committee in the Indiana Senate also put a stop to HB 1142, which, as discussed here, had at least a small potential for improving the local food economy in Indiana. Rep. Sandy Blanton, who proposed the bill, may be giving the bill another shot next round.

Hunger and local food in Indiana

Below is an excerpt from the Indiana Senate Democrats' blog. Note the $300,000 appropriation for local food for the hungry.

Tuesday [Feb. 16] was Food Bank Day at the Statehouse, providing legislators and other state officials with an important reminder of the nearly 600,000 Hoosiers who go to bed hungry each night. Advocates and many Senate Democrats hope the event will also help encourage the state to release $300,000 appropriated by the General Assembly to the state’s food banks last year in the state budget.

The appropriation was intended exclusively for Indiana grown and produced products to feed low-income children, adults, and seniors in need throughout the state. Releasing the $300,000 appropriation would mean that Indiana’s food banks could provide more than 1,250,000 additional meals to hungry Hoosiers across the state.

Read the rest here. It seems like it's a non-controversial, bi-partisan measure to appropriate these funds for food banks during this economic crisis. But why is any spending intended for infrastructure that will alleviate hunger and health problems in the long term regarded as a strain on the budget?

Indeed, SB 194, proposed in January in the Indiana Senate by Sen. Errington, contained no spending provisions. The bill was discarded by the Agriculture and Small Business Committee Chairman (Sen. Johnny Nugent), in part, because it could involve spending "down the road."

Where is the discussion of food deserts? Of urban farming? Of Indiana's health rankings?

Meat and Poultry Inspection Budget Cuts

Update on the cuts to the meat inspection program here.

State Senator Sue Errington of Muncie spoke in support of an amendment on Monday that reinstates the requirements of the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program under the Indiana Board of Animal Health. Recent budget cuts threatened locally owned state-inspected meat processing facilities as well as an estimated 1,600 jobs in those processing facilities.

The Indiana Senate Dems blog from which this information comes has not been updated to say that Sen. Errington's amendment failed later that same day!

SB 0035, the bill in which her amendment was introduced, contains a huge assortment of provisions, from elimination of "the requirement to submit fingerprints to the horse racing commission every five years" to granting permission to "the board for the deaf school and blind school to prescribe [...] a salary schedule for the school without having to make the daily rate of pay for a teacher equal to that of a teacher at the Indianapolis public schools."

This crazy bill is now heading to the House where perhaps there will be another chance for a legislator to propose an amendment to ameliorate the effects of the Meat and Poultry Inspection Program cuts.

Meanwhile, Gov. Daniels has responded to complaints by saying the cuts won't be as deep as first proposed. It remains to be seen what this vague pronouncement really means.