The Farm Bill should promote healthy food and clean water

Lawmakers should reject provisions that would do damage to our environment

How we grow our food has wide-ranging implications for public health and the environment. Ideally, we would have policies that embrace the intersection between agriculture and nature, and we would better incorporate land conservation into our food production and incentivize responsible, eco-friendly practices.

These ideals should be central in Congress’ reauthorization of the Farm Bill. Instead, over the past month, the Farm Bill — making its way through Congress — has become one of the biggest threats to our clean water and our environment.

The Farm Bill, in a nutshell, is a massive bundle of policies that affect the U.S.’s massive agricultural industry. Every five years, Congress must reauthorize and update this package. It impacts everything from crop insurance for farmers to food stamps for people in poverty. Because these measures make the Farm Bill effectively “must pass” legislation, it is a perfect vehicle to which members of Congress can hitch initiatives that relax regulations on polluters.

That helps explain how, hidden in the depths of the massive House-approved Farm Bill, there are several anti-environmental provisions. Most notably, H.R. 2 would repeal the Clean Water Rule, which restored federal protections for half of our nation’s streams and millions of acres of wetlands.

However, the House bill doesn’t stop there. It also includes provisions to allow destructive mining, drilling and roadbuilding in our national forests in Alaska — including the Tongass, which is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world. It would exempt pesticide pollution from the Clean Water Act, even though pesticides have contributed to more than 1,800 instances of water pollution across the country. It would eliminate the Conservation Stewardship Program, the nation’s largest conservation program by acreage. It would preempt state and local laws aimed at health and environmental impacts of factory farms. It would undermine the Endangered Species Act. And finally, it would eliminate public input and environmental review for a wide range of activities on public lands.

You’d be hard-pressed to present a list of policies more damaging to our environment.

The Farm Bill’s passage through both chambers was a roller coaster ride. In the House, though the bill failed on the first try, a backroom deal secured the final few votes just in time for the second attempt, passing without any fixes to its anti-environment provisions. It passed on June 21, but only by 2 votes: 213 to 211.

Many of the same harmful provisions were simultaneously being debated behind closed doors in the upper chamber. We, along with our allies, spoke out loudly and clearly, telling senators that our land and water should not be up for debate in the Farm Bill, and poisoning our water and land to grow our food makes no sense.

Unlike in the House, Senate leadership got the message. Senators Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), the leaders of the Committee on Agriculture, kept the Senate Farm Bill clean of anti-environmental amendments. It passed the Senate on June 28th by a vote of 86 to 11.

Over the summer, the differences between the House and Senate versions will have to be hashed out through conference talks. The differences are considerable, so this will be no easy task. Yet negotiators should be mindful that the Senate’s “clean” approach is not only good policy, but also supported by the American people. Even in our divided times, poll after poll shows widespread public support for maintaining federal protections for our air, land and water.

At the end of the day, there is a lot more to the Farm Bill than corn policy. We should all be intent on getting a bill that promotes both healthy food and clean water. There is plenty of room for improvement, and there are plenty of good ideas out there. A strong Farm Bill should include provisions of Rep. Huffman’s (CA) Farmers CARE Act, which would ensure that Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) dollars are used to promote sustainable farming. The bill should bolster the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which is the largest private-lands conservation program in the United States, and expand Sodsaver, which helps to disincentivize native grasslands from being converted into cropland. We need increased funding for the Agriculture Conservation Easement Program, which protects grasslands, wetlands, and agricultural land, as well as for the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), which helps to fund conservation projects.

Sustainable agriculture will mean more, healthier food to sustain all of us. That starts with a healthy Farm Bill. Here’s to keeping the final Farm Bill clean!