Call for a Fair Farm Bill

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Conact: Emma Greenbaum

Phone: 520.275.4812

Emil: emma@greencorps.org

Jan. 24: New Yorkers Take Action for a Fair Farm Bill

What: On Tuesday, Jan. 24, activists across New York will be staging public events, making calls and sending postcards to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to encourage her to support family farmers by advocating for a Fair Farm Bill. 

Who: Food & Water Watch is organizing a Day of Action and calling on Westchester County residents who care about the food they eat to participate

When and Where:  Tuesday, January 24, 2012. Calls will be made across New York. In White Plains, volunteers will assemble in at 11 a.m. to ask fellow New Yorkers to make calls to Senator Gillibrand’s office.

Background:

Nearly all of the problems in our current food system can be traced back to the fact that a small number of large corporations control everything we eat: four companies control 85 percent of beef processing, Dean Foods controls 40 percent of all fluid milk, and five companies control more than 50 percent of all grocery stores.

Once the backbone of our country, small and midsized family farmers are forced to get big or go out of business. Nationally, nearly 27,000 midsize independent family farms have been driven out of business over the past five years, and those remaining are being squeezed by a market that gives preferential treatment to big agribusinesses.

The only way to repair our food system is with better food policy at the federal level. The farm bill sets the country’s food policy and is up for debate in 2012.

It is a massive piece of legislation that should ensure that there are fair rules and contracts between processors and producers so that farmers can get a fair price and consumers have real choice.

The 2008 Farm Bill included some new reforms to protect small and midsize farmers who raise cattle, hogs and chickens, but the corporate agribusiness lobby forged a massive attack to prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture from finalizing rules that would have given small, independent livestock and poultry producers protection against unfair treatment by large meat packers. Then in December 2011, the rules, known as the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration (GIPSA) Rule, were gutted, leaving only a few narrow poultry provisions intact.

In 2011, Senator Gillibrand stood up for the GIPSA Rule, and we hope she will continue to stand up for family farmers by co-sponsoring a competition title in the farm bill that will include the fair farm rules and other protections including a ban on meatpackers owning livestock. Our food system can only be fixed with a farm bill that works for farmers, consumers, and the environment; not just big agribusiness.

Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable.

So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control. www.foodandwaterwatch.org