The cuts would come in the Farm Bill, which expires next year. The committee members hope the voluntary reductions, which they propose to put together in detail by Nov. 1, will inoculate agriculture from further cuts from the congressional super committee.

The letter is signed by Agricultural Committee Senate Chair Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), House Chair Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), ranking member Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and ranking member Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

“We are currently finalizing the policies that would achieve $23 billion in deficit reduction and will provide a complete legislative package by November 1, 2011. Deficit savings at this level is more than any sequestration process would achieve and should absolve the programs in our jurisdiction from any further reductions.”

Mary Kay Thatcher, director of Public Policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation told American Agriculturalist that nutrition and crop insurance programs will probably be mostly safe.

“There aren’t really specifics as far as how much cuts are coming to commodities versus conservation versus nutrition,” Thatcher said. “Certainly the word on the street has been fairly significant that the committees are recommending elimination of direct payments and moving toward more of a revenue loss program but nothing in writing that spells out those kinds of details.”

Some House Republicans have proposed higher cuts of up to $50 billion, according to Agriculture.com. Earlier in the month, two congressional Republicans proposed to cut $40 billion from agriculture, including steep cuts to farm subsidies, conservation and nutrition.

Sustainability activist from Food and Water Watch joins with local activists to enjoy an organic feast. (Boven)

Sen. Michael Bennet urged Pres. Barack Obama late last week to finalize and implement rules to even the playing field for small ranchers and chicken farmers in competition with corporate giants in the industry. Sustainable food advocates, who have been traveling the country asking legislators to sign on to similar letters, claimed the senator’s move as a minor victory in what they see as a battle between David and Goliath.

Bennet renewed his support for the speedy implementation of the amended Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, a rule that has long been difficult for the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration (GIPSA) to implement, in a letter signed by the senator.

“I write to underscore the value of a fair and transparent market in which all livestock and poultry producers compete on a level playing field,” Bennet said in the letter. “For these reasons, I strongly oppose efforts to stop the USDA from implementing the rule and urge you to prioritize the rule’s finalization.”

Bennet said that while the new rules were not perfect, the new Farm Bill, which is currently being targeted by legislators for budget cuts, would serve to allow lawmakers to make any necessary changes.

Bennet sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The Packers and Stockyards Act was passed by Congress in 1921 as a series of anti-trust laws on the meat and poultry industry. However, rules that defined “undue or unreasonable preferences” in the act were never created by the USDA causing it to lose much of its strength. Small farmers and sustainability advocates say corporate interests caused the law to simply sit on the books unenforced for years.

The new rules, drafted to bring the 1921 laws up to date with modern times, are a response to provisions in the 2008 Food Conservation and Energy Act that called for the establishment of criteria for the USDA’s GIPSA to determine if unreasonable preferences are being used in the industry.

However, the comment period on the rules was extended to November of 2010 amid considerable controversy. According to Food and Water Watch, since 2010, Washington has been slow to finalize the rules due to industry lobbying efforts.

The National Pork Producers Council has said that there will be “a chilling effect on innovation and flexibility” if the new rules are implemented. According to the industry group there will no longer be a method for packers to justify tiered rates on hogs, which they say could ultimately lead to higher vertical integration in the industry.

Small farmers and food advocates disagree. They say the industry has been forcing small livestock producers into poverty for years by causing many producers to enter into contracts instead of delivering competitive prices through bidding, while offering competitive forward contracts only to larger producers.  While some say the move has stabilized the market, others explain that it has lowered the price of meat to the point where many small producers simply can no longer compete.

The new rules would work to stop price premiums and prevent preferential contracts from being given to large factory farms, prevent a single buyer from representing multiple meat packers at an auction and provide protections for poultry producers.

Food and Water Watch, the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union and others said their coalition had put together a petition with over 3,000 signatures urging Bennet to request the rules be implemented.

While their letter also called for his pledge to defend many programs that help family owned farms, sustainability projects, and nutritional subsidy programs for the poor, Sam Schabacker, Mountain West regional director, Food & Water Watch, said they were ecstatic that he had at least committed so far to the new GIPSA rules.

“It is not everyday that a group of people can get a senator to do something that could directly influence the president,” Schabacker said. He said that the Obama administration, which first pushed for the rules, has been going “really slow” and responding to companies such as Monsanto in the finalization of the new anti-trust legislation.  But he said that in this case the voice of Colorado residents have been heard.

He said that his organization along with a host of others hoped to bring more members of the Agricultural Committee on board.

Still, Schabacker told a small gathering of food sustainability advocates attending a potluck in Longmont on Friday that they would continue to fight for programs they see as helping both the poor and small food producers.

“This fight is not over, there are so

Activists listen to Farm Bill discussion. (Boven)

many other important programs that we want to make sure and defend in the farm bill,”  Schabacker said.

He listed a number of bills he expected to see cuts to. Some of those have been targeted in the President’s 2012 proposed budget while others have found there way in to House proposals including direct farm ownership loans that primarily benefit beginning and minority farmers, Rural Business Enterprise Grants, Farmers Market Nutrition Program, Community Food Project grants, and expected cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program among numerous others.

While Bennet has been in the Middle East, his office responded to questions concerning the Senator’s response to possible cuts by providing this quote from a speech earlier this year.

“We are going to have to ask hard questions and figure out how to do more with less,” Bennet said. “This will mean having discussions about whether to continue to provide farmers with a little bit of help every single year or to provide more substantial assistance when it is needed most. We will also have to identify gaps and overlaps in the different programs that comprise the farm safety net and better integrate these programs while making them more user-friendly.”

Despite the acknowledgment that the country remains in uncertain economic times, advocates were less than enthusiastic about cutting programs to help small farms.

“It is hogwash,” Amy Fontenot, a resident of Longmont who attended the potluck, said concerning possible cuts to sustainability programs.

“It is the issue that spans across the board,” Fontenot continued. “It means taking the power away from a few corporations and giving it to a few farmers who are sustainable and are going to connect people back to the earth with our food.

Heirloom squash, eggplant and pumpkins at the Boulder Farmers

The writer and activist Michael Pollan has no interest in becoming Barack Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, thank you very much, even though there are a lot of people who think he’d be perfect for the job.

Pollan disagrees. Laughing, he told my colleague Bill Moyers on the latest edition of public television’s “Bill Moyers Journal,” “I have an understanding of my strengths and limitations … I don’t want this job,” then turned serious as he added, “What Obama needs to do, if he indeed wants to make change in this area — and that isn’t clear yet that he does, at least in his first term — I think we need a food policy czar in the White House because the challenge is not just what we do with agriculture, it’s connecting the dots between agriculture and public health, between agriculture and energy and climate change, agriculture and education.”

There’s been an Internet-fueled citizen’s movement to draft Pollan for the cabinet post. As the author of countless articles and such books as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” and “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” his thorough reporting, literally getting his hands dirty working on American farms and writing about it, has made him one of our country’s greatest experts on how and what we eat.

In an open letter to whoever would become our next president — or “Farmer in Chief,” as he put it in the Oct. 12 New York Times Magazine — Pollan wrote:

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril…

But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

In 2007, before the financial meltdown had even struck, some 32 million Americans — at least one in nine households — had trouble putting enough food on the table. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, food banks across the country are struggling to meet a surge of people uncertain about their next meal. They’ve seen a 20% increase in demand — middle class families, they say, account for most of the growth.

And the day before our annual Thanksgiving binge, the Washington Post reported, “The number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.”

Contrast this with the big bucks being shelled out in the recent $307 billion farm bill, much of it going to massive agribusinesses — “A welfare program,” as Time Magazine described it, “for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water, and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals and depopulate rural America.”

In a press conference on Tuesday, President-elect Obama cited a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office: “From 2003 to 2006, millionaire farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though they were earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff to qualify for such subsidies, ” he said. “If this is true, it is a prime example of the kind of waste I intend to end as president.”

All well and good, but as a senator, Barack Obama supported that monster farm bill (although he was absent for the actual roll call). He also supported the production of ethanol (a politically expedient move when the Iowa Democratic caucuses were at stake), even though using corn for fuel rather than food raises the price of grain and results in huge emissions of greenhouse gases.

Thus, where food and agriculture are concerned, connecting the dots, as Michael Pollan told Bill Moyers, is a tortuous journey involving internecine politics, international diplomacy, big business, every branch of government and every issue from morbid obesity to homeland security.

Pollan is hopeful that Obama will take advantage of his oratorical skills and bully pulpit to set an example for the American people, perhaps even suggesting “meatless Mondays” for the country — which according to Pollan would have the ecological effect of taking 30-40 million cars off the road for a year — and encouraging home gardening and eating locally; supporting the small farmers who grow fresh food nearby, without chemicals or subsidies.

“I think we have to figure out different solutions in different places, and it’s not all or nothing,” he said. “We need to let a thousand flowers bloom. We need to try many things in many places, and figure out what works…

“Vote with your fork, for a different kind of food. Go to the farmer’s market. Get out of the supermarket … Plant a garden. … Declare your independence from the culture of fast food.” Regardless of who Obama chooses as his ag secretary, it will be interesting to see if the new president sees fit to make Pollan an unofficial adviser on food issues, an influential voice in his — you should excuse the expression — kitchen cabinet.

Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program “Bill Moyers Journal,” which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

Though Obama didn’t vote for it because he was on the campaign trail — and he maintained that the bill was “far from perfect” — he issued a statement expressing his support and accusing opponents of “saying no to America’s farmers and ranchers.”

Under the bill, individuals earning up to $750,000 in farm income and $500,000 in non-farm income are eligible for federal “help.” That means that a farming couple could make as much as $2.5 million in a year and still receive taxpayer subsidies.

One distinction to be made: Obama’s criticism of the program — as reported by the Government Accountability Office this week — stems from abuses under the bill, not the bill itself. That is, the GAO found that folks earning higher than the income threshold were still receiving payments. It’s an easy thing to criticize. The question is, how far would a President Obama go to change that income threshold altogether?

(Photo/josh, Flickr)

How small-town voters will go for one of two city-slicker presidential candidates may turn not to values or who looks most convincing in a Stetson hat but assurances that rural economic concerns will be among the next administration’s tight budget priorities following the massive financial sector bailout by the government last week.

A conference call today with four prominent Colorado politicians on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama touched on the Holy Trinity of western rural issues — veterans, gun rights and water.

In hard-hitting remarks reminiscent of his Democratic National Convention speech, U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Mannassa, noted that he honored GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s military service but was disturbed by the Arizona senator’s voting record on veterans health issues and a dismal 20 percent approval rating by the Disabled Veterans of America.

State Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, countered recent attempts by the National Rifle Association to blast Obama’s record on gun rights through a series of attack ads running in Colorado, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. Isgar challenged the notion that the Democratic nominee and constitutional law expert would not vigorously defend the Second Amendment.

And not to let a good gaffe go unpunished, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar reminded the media that McCain called for renegotiating the Colorado water compact — an incredibly politically damaging statement that sparked a firestorm of controversy. And the unlikely duo of Salazar and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer both vowed to fight McCain to the death over any attempt to relieve Colorado of any more of its water to keep Scottsdale lawns lush. The Arizona governor, eventually realizing his “whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting” blunder, attempted to recover by complaining the statement was “mistakenly construed” by the press.

That left state Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, to bat cleanup on Obama’s rural record by highlighting a pledge to commit $150 billion to renewable energy investments and a willingness to listen to rural lawmakers about flyover country concerns.

But the twice presidential-vetoed Farm Bill may hold the most sway with rural folk on their presidential preferences.

A recent poll by the Center for Rural Strategies reports that McCain holds a strong 51-41 lead over Obama with the pool of largely socially and fiscally conservative rural voters in Colorado and 12 key swing states. McCain got high marks on taxes and the war, but the candidates were tied on their ability to handle the economy, the respondents’ No. 1 concern.

Of particular note, though, is that the poll was conducted in mid-September just as news was breaking on the Wall Street credit and mortgage crisis, the depth of which was then largely unknown. How McCain’s continued poor response to the economic meltdown will affect his standing with rural voters, who make up 20 percent of the electorate, remains to be seen. An Oct. 6 NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll shows Obama up six points, fueled in part by voters’ belief that he responded more effectively to economic concerns over the last few weeks than McCain.

One important predictor of electoral kismet with rural voters is support for the Farm Bill — the $288 billion package is largely perceived by the public as an agriculture trade and subsidy program but in reality extends to a host of rural investment opportunities through economic development, broadband expansion, food safety, renewable energy projects and infrastructure programs.

Sen. Salazar referred to his Illinois colleague as a champion of the Farm Bill. While Obama publicly favored the bill and McCain supported the president’s veto, neither candidate actually cast a vote on the original Senate bill nor the override bill, known as the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, brought forward by the House of Representatives that passed on June 18.

But after Congress turned the latest stopgap $630 billion spending measure into a $6.7 billion Christmas bonanza of earmarks and then quickly approved a $700 billion Wall Street bailout just days later, concerns have been raised on how either candidate will fund the myriad of programs each is proposing on the campaign stump.

The pork-filled Farm Bill is a prime target.

Sen. Salazar likened the nation’s current financial woes to “a legacy of eight years of failed economic policies under George Bush,” which he described as a “horrific picture” of continued Bush policies in a potential McCain administration. “We need to do a lot to get the economy out of the ditch and get it back on track.” Salazar argued that investing the $10 billion per month that currently goes to support the Iraq War could be put toward job-producing renewable energy projects in the Farm Bill and shoring up weak financial institution regulatory bodies.

Infrastructure projects was the top reason why Rep. John Salazar said the bill needs to continue even under the current economic crisis. He cited a Congressional Research Service study that for every billion dollars put toward economic projects 47,500 new jobs are created.

State Sen. Isgar argued that the Farm Bill revitalizes food-producing rural America and is the one thing we have to afford even with a shrinking public pocketbook.

The Obama Rural Vote team will have the opportunity to make that pitch directly to voters in 16 planned Colorado town meetings beginning Wednesday. The barn-storming rural policy tour will feature former Gov. Roy Romer, who hails from Holly and is a former Holly-native, rancher and John Deere equipment dealer; the San Luis Valley-bred Salazar brothers; Gov. Bill Ritter, who grew up on a dry-land wheat farm; and rancher, wind farm owner and state Agriculture Commissioner John Stulp. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, will join them on the Thursday leg of the trip.

Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008
Community Gathering in Sterling with Gov. Romer
Logan County Courthouse
Main Street and S. 3rd Street
Sterling, Colo.
9 a.m.
For more information, call (970) 472-4263.

Small Business Walk in Sterling with Gov. Romer
Main Street
Sterling, Colo.
9:30 a.m.
For more information, call (970) 472-4263.

Community Gathering and Lunch in Fort Morgan with Gov. Ritter, Gov. Romer, and Sen. Salazar
Country Steak Out
19592 E. 8th Ave.
Fort Morgan, Colo.
11:45 a.m.
For more information, call (970) 472-4263.

Community Gathering in Windsor Gov. Ritter, Gov. Romer, and Sen. Salazar
Location to be determined
Windsor, Colo.
2:45 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 472-4263.

Campaign for Change Office Opening with Sen. Salazar and Gov. Romer
1642 8th Ave.
Greeley, Colo.
5:15 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 472-4263.

Thursday, Oct. 9, 2008
Breakfast with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, Sen. Klobuchar, and Rep. Salazar
City Diner, 2nd Floor
1002 N. Santa Fe Ave.
Pueblo, Colo.
8 a.m.
For more information, call (719) 778-9976.

Community Gathering in Canon City with Gov. Ritter, Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Sen. Klobuchar
Location to be determined
Canon City, Colo.
10:05 a.m.
For more information, call (719) 778-9976.

Community Gathering in Salida with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Sen. Klobuchar
Boathouse Cantina
228 North F St.
Salida, Colo.
12:20 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Community Gathering in Gunnison with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Sen. Klobuchar
Western State College
The Aspinall-Wilson Center
Gunnison, Colo.
3:05 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Community Gathering in Montrose with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Sen. Klobuchar
Location to be determined
Montrose, Colo.
5:45 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Friday, Oct. 8, 2008
Coffee in Olathe with Gov. Romer and Sen. Salazar
4th and Main (White Café)
318 Main St.
Olathe, Colo.
7:30 a.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Community Gathering in Hotchkiss with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Commissioner Stulp
Heritage Hall (Inside the fairgrounds)
403 E. Bridge St.
Hotchkiss, Colo.
9:30 a.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Community Gathering in Grand Junction with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Commissioner Stulp
Lincoln Park Pavilion
North Avenue and 12th Street
Grand Junction, Colo.
noon
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Campaign for Change Office Visit in Glenwood Springs with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Commissioner Stulp
216 6th St.
Glenwood Springs, Colo.
2:50 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Dinner in Edwards with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Commissioner Stulp
Woody’s
27 Main St.
Edwards, Colo.
5:30 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.

Campaign for Change Office Visit in Dillon with Gov. Romer, Sen. Salazar, and Commissioner Stulp
115 Village
Dillon, Colo.
7:30 p.m.
For more information, call (970) 245-4477.