FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: NSAC Welcomes Farm Bill Extension, Urges Lawmakers to Pass the Next Farm Bill in Early 2024 

Washington, DC, November 16, 2023 – The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) celebrates the passage of an extension to the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (the Farm Bill, which had expired on September 30) until September 2024. The Senate’s passage yesterday of the House continuing resolution means the government will avoid a shutdown and lawmakers will have time to develop a comprehensive five-year farm bill. President Biden is expected to sign the extension, which is included in the continuing resolution to fund the government, this week.

“The growing impacts from the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill required immediate attention – we’re pleased to see an extension that fully funds key ‘orphan’ programs that help farmers access higher-value organic markets and expand access to agricultural education,” said Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director. 

“While the extension offers a degree of stability and much-needed breathing room, we’ll soon be more than five years removed from the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. The intervening years have been among the most tumultuous in our nation’s history – as an increasingly disruptive and changing climate, the COVID-19 pandemic and societal impacts, and a long-overdue racial justice reckoning conspired to thoroughly unveil the fragility of our current food system,” Lavender noted, adding that: 

“Farmers, ranchers, and food system stakeholders deserve updated federal policy that levels the playing field, invests in a climate resilient future, and advances racial equity. We implore Congress to pass a strong, bipartisan farm bill in early 2024.” 

Earlier this week, NSAC sent a letter to Senate and House Agriculture Committee leadership reaffirming the coalition’s support of the one-year bipartisan agreement to extend the 2018 Farm Bill. The letter encouraged Congress to remain focused on passing a strong, bipartisan farm bill as soon as possible, given the already burgeoning ramifications of the bill’s expiration. The full letter is here. 

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more: https://sustainableagriculture.net/

The post Release: NSAC Welcomes Farm Bill Extension, Urges Lawmakers to Pass the Next Farm Bill in Early 2024 appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced the 2023 Regional Food System Partnership, Farmers Market Promotion and Local Food Promotion program awards, totaling  $32 million for 98 projects to bolster local and regional food economies across the country. 

This year, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) offered a new ‘turnkey’ application process for applicants seeking funding for a specific set of marketing and promotion activities for Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion grants. ‘Turnkey’ is a term for simplified federal grants with short applications and lower barriers to entry. This post highlights this new process and features National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) members who were awarded a grant this year.

Background

The 2018 Farm Bill created new opportunities to coordinate and maximize investments in local and regional food systems by creating the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP). This program combined existing Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion and Value-Added Producer grant programs with a new Regional Food System Partnership program. The combination of the programs ensures they each have permanent funding and encourages coordination between AMS and Rural Development. Stakeholders also advocated for the simplification of application and reporting processes to increase the accessibility of the program for small and rural organizations. 

The Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) was first established in 2002 to offer funding for the development, expansion, or coordination of direct-to-consumer activities. As demand for local food has nearly doubled since 2008, advocates such as NSAC recognized the need to support a wider variety of activities that create and sustain local and regional food systems. Over years of advocacy, this led to the eventual creation of the Local Food Promotion (LFPP) and Regional Food System Partnership Program (RFSP) which offers support across the supply chain for mid-tier businesses and value-chain coordination. 

FY2023 Awards

This year AMS announced funding for Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion projects that include $13.9 million for 55 FMPP projects and $14.1 million for 33 LFPP projects. Twenty-two of the awardees participated in the new turnkey marketing and promotion application. 

Securing a federal grant is no simple task. The applications often contain dozens of pages of instruction and an additional dozen in writing, letters of support, match documentation, and project budgets. While these AMS funding opportunities are intended to support business development and the growth of local food economies in underserved areas, they often require extensive time and experience that some organizations don’t necessarily have. Community organizations have advocated for simplified applications and reporting procedures to ensure organizations have equal opportunity for awards, no matter if they have allocated staff for grant writing. The 2018 Farm Bill included language that directed AMS to simplify the application and reporting procedures and provide technical assistance to support prospective applicants. 

This year, AMS offered an abbreviated grant application referred to as the “turnkey marketing and promotion grant”. The application offered shorter narrative sections and outcome measurements were pre-populated. Applicants using this simplified application could fund project promotion and marketing activities such as, developing or implementing a marketing plan, analyzing new markets, or measuring the success of new techniques.  These activities have consistent work elements and have demonstrated effectiveness in expanding local food markets, making it simpler to make funding determinations. 

The creation of a turnkey grant not only increases equity in USDA award distribution. It also builds capacity for organizations to pursue future, larger AMS awards. AMS offers a variety of application types that allow for planning, implementation and broader network training.  

Examples from the field

The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), an NSAC member,  was awarded a turnkey grant to develop three studies (an economic impact report, audience audit, and organic language assessment) and three marketing campaigns (for farmer support, buyer training, and consumer awareness). MOFGA hopes community stakeholders will increase their technical knowledge about local foods, producers will gain knowledge about new market opportunities, and consumers will gain knowledge about local agricultural products. 

 “I loved the turnkey application – it felt very approachable. This was one of the first times I applied for a project that would involve multiple departments at MOFGA, and the simplicity of the application made it easier to collaborate on the proposal. A long narrative application would have been more complicated,” commented Ryan Dennett, MOFGA Programs Director.

Other Farmers Market Promotion awards focused on community development, training, or technical assistance. The Michigan Farmers Market Association (MIFMA), another NSAC member, will partner with Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to train and build the capacity of farmers markets to collect and analyze data characterizing their market’s social, environmental and economic impact. Markets will use data to create a marketing campaign to increase market sales and reach communities underrepresented among market shoppers.

“We all know that data is powerful and that sharing the right piece of data with the right audience can create tangible results. The Michigan Farmers Market Association (MIFMA) has been working for over a decade to create a culture of data collection amongst farmers markets in Michigan and beyond. Our partnership with Michigan State University on this FMPP grant will help us further unlock feasible, scale appropriate and impactful ways to collect, analyze, and share data targeted to specific audiences that can help increase customer attendance, grow vendor sales, and expand the inclusivity of farmers markets,” said Amanda Shreve, Executive Director of MIFMA.

However, some NSAC members shared that an easier application was not enough to increase participation among smaller farmers markets or organizations. There are still challenges, like the match requirements, which organizations are working to change in the upcoming Farm Bill reauthorization. 

With the Farm Bill reauthorization on the horizon, there are proposals that would improve the turnkey application process and make it a permanent option for Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program grants. The Local Farms and Food Act would offer simplified turnkey applications for a wider variety of activities, such as staff time and equipment for business ventures. Additional proposals have called for the elimination of the match requirement. Combined, these proposals would increase program accessibility and ensure funding can be used for catalytic investments that support strong markets and increased capacity. 

The post USDA Unveils Streamlined Local Food Funding appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: NSAC Celebrates Final Rule Promoting Transparency for Contract Poultry Growers

Washington, DC, November 8, 2023 – Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) celebrated Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for publishing the first of several expected final rules to modernize the century-old Packers and Stockyards Act: “Transparency in Poultry Growing Contracts and Tournaments.” The rulemaking process was set in motion as part of the Biden Administration’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy in 2021.  

“This final rule is an important first step that will shed light on the opaque and unfair poultry tournament system to protect contract poultry growers,” said Billy Hackett, NSAC Policy Specialist. “Transparency is necessary in any supply chain as a bulwark against anticompetitive or harmful manipulation and abuse of workers – in this case, growers.” 

The rule was first proposed in June 2022, followed by the customary public comment process. NSAC submitted a comment uplifting recommendations from the Campaign for Contract Agriculture Reform to strengthen the rule’s intended impact.

The Transparency in Poultry Growing Contracts and Tournaments Final Rule will require live poultry dealers to disclose critical information to poultry growers with whom they enter into contracts. These measures will be an important deterrent against anticompetitive practices in a highly consolidated industry, where poultry companies act as “integrators” that control the supply and quality of inputs (e.g., the quality of feed and chicks) and are known to manipulate these variables to punish growers who have spoken out against industry abuses. The final rule will take effect in February 2024.

Today, Secretary Vilsack also announced his intention to appoint a Chief Competition Officer at USDA to reinforce policy development and enforcement to advance fair competition. NSAC will continue to work with our members and allies to support and inform the ongoing PSA rulemakings, as we have for 15 years. 

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more: https://sustainableagriculture.net/

The post Release: NSAC Celebrates Final Rule Promoting Transparency for Contract Poultry Growers appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The Strengthening Local Processing Act (SLPA) is the most comprehensive meat processing bill around, with specific provisions that address competition, demand for local products, and access to value added services in the meat processing sector. It does so by addressing acute issues for processors vital to our supply chain, and by promoting training programs that bolster the resilience of these processors, the farmers they work with, and food access for their communities. Led by Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Jim Baird (R-IN), this comprehensive solution to some of the greatest barriers facing independent and small-scale producers and processors has garnered strong bipartisan support, in both the House and Senate.  

History of Independent Small-Scale Meat Processing

Many of the companies created at the advent of mass meat processing have persisted to today, even if their names and principal owners have changed over time. Despite various waves of antitrust activity over the last century, these companies continue to hold consolidated power over the industry, creating an unequal playing field that boxes out small and medium-sized entities. These large-scale processing companies may provide lower cost products for consumers through their economies of scale and vertical integration, yet they have many downsides. They often have unsafe working conditions and a structure that makes it hard to advocate against these abuses. They leave our meat and poultry processing system and supply chain brittle and slow to move with changing conditions such as climate impacts, communicable diseases, or war-related barriers, all of which our agricultural markets have faced in recent years.  

The evolving needs of our food system consequently require agile policy solutions that adapt to the challenges at hand.  Hardworking but under-resourced small to midsize processors lack the support and the financial infrastructure in their communities to expand their capacity. Building an array of financing options can enable different processors to provide more diverse services for producers as well.

Recent Actions

In recent years, and most noticeably during the supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, several agencies within the USDA – including Rural Development and the Agricultural Marketing Service – have helped direct critical funding specifically to small and very small meat processing plants. These investments have supported smaller-scale farmers who are implementing important sustainable practices like organic or highly rotational grazing, and who consequently seek a premium on their product through the sale of whole cuts, local marketing, and processing in line with their raising label or certifications.

Examples of these investments are the Meat and Poultry Programs (MP programs), such as the Inspection Readiness Grant (MPIRG), Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP) and Intermediary Lending Program (MPILP) which have helped smaller plants scale up or prepare themselves for federal inspection utilizing different sized grants and loans. Sustaining funding for these programs is vital to continuing to build a more resilient and agile food system.

NSAC was pleased to see rounds of awards from the MP programs. We also supported funding more agriculture of the middle initiatives, with significant investments to help aggregate small producers and support mid-scale producers.  Unlike these other initiatives, SLPA is specifically focused on supporting the smaller ‘mom and pop’ operations that form the cornerstone of local food economies, and local economies as a whole. The Local Meat Capacity and Indigenous Animal Processing Grant Programs, which recently held calls for proposals, will go a long way towards sustaining this goal. The high demand for these two programs, as well as MPPEP, demonstrates a clear need to continue funding programs focused on small meat processors, to better serve the demand from local and sustainable meat and poultry producers.

The history and present-day reality of consolidation in the meat processing sector – coupled with the recent successes in expanding opportunity and support for smaller-scale, independent processing through USDA’s pandemic-era programming – make it clear that the Farm Bill must sustain these investments and permanently authorize programs that build regional processing capacity.  The SLPA provides a vehicle for doing so, and enjoys broad support across the agriculture and food sectors for these reasons outlined below.

1. SLPA will address critical workforce shortages and training needs

Currently, many small meat packers across the country, from Minnesota to California are struggling to staff up. They cannot meet the demand for the highly skilled employees they need or find co-owners if they operate an employee-owned cooperative. 

To realize the full benefits of the previous taxpayer investment in meat processing capacity expansion, additional training programs are needed to create and sustain the diverse workforce these varied plants require and to help grow the next generation of leaders in the sector. 

It is clear highly trained professionals are needed to  help run these plants and provide vital services to their local communities – making sure sustainably raised livestock and poultry make it from farm to table. In addition to prioritizing worker training to address immediate workforce shortages, SLPA would also provide grants to support the development of skills necessary for workers to eventually assume cooperative or individual ownership of these plants as well. 

“[SLPA] creates an Institutional Career Training Program to work towards building a pipeline of talented individuals interested in making a career out of providing a high-quality and nutritious food source for their fellow Americans.”

– US Cattlemen’s Association president Justin Tupper

To do so, SLPA creates two meat processing training program grants that assist and train small plant operators, small plant employees, and the next generation of meat processors and butchers. It does so by supporting training programs in both institutions – such as technical colleges, nonprofits, and worker training centers – and small and very small plants. These two categories allow for flexibility in meeting the sector’s changing needs for workforce training. In each case, SLPA authorizes an annual appropriation of $10 million, a modest amount to launch the program and demonstrate its value over the life of the Farm Bill.

2. SLPA will increase regional and interstate trade and open new markets for local producers

Processors and the producers they serve not only need additional training and support for workforce development, but also easier to access, expanded markets. For producers on the borders of states that do not have appropriately sized plants where they can take their herds to sell into wholesale markets, SLPA would help expand potential markets for them. It would do so by creating incentives for states to create their own Meat and Poultry Inspection programs, or if they already do – incentivize them to join the Cooperative Interstate Shipping program.

“SLPA would also require the US Department of Agriculture to encourage state participation in the Cooperative Interstate Shipment program, which would open access for interstate shipment of meat and poultry, something that isn’t always currently allowed.“

– U.S. Cattlemen’s Association president Justin Tupper 

Currently, only 29 states have state Meat and Poultry Inspection (MPI) programs, which allow for sale and shipment within the state and which are currently cost-shared equally between the state and Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).  SLPA would increase the federal government’s maximum cost share from 50 percent to 65 percent. This would help states with existing MPI programs cover costs and incentivize additional states to establish MPI programs.

States that have MPI programs can also opt into the Cooperative Interstate Shipment (CIS) program which allows for interstate shipment for small plants. Currently, the USDA does not actively solicit participation in the CIS program, nor does it provide the cost breakdowns or the resources available to participating states.

SLPA would require FSIS to conduct outreach to states with state inspection programs that are not part of the CIS program, and to submit a report to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees each year detailing the activities and the results of the outreach conducted. 

To further expand participation in CSI, SLPA would increase the amount of total program costs that USDA will cover from 60  to 80 percent. It also would change the small plant eligibility size for participation in this program from plants with less than 25 employees to plants with less than 50 employees. Increasing the size of plants able to be inspected under the CIS program would create new markets for those plants that are on the size and processing capacity cusp and may struggle to achieve federal grant of inspection, but are interested in pursuing larger markets. For a long time, limited intrastate markets have limited the growth of non federally or CIS inspected  small and midsize meat processors, especially those that may be located close to the state border. 

In addition to creating more market opportunities for processors, SLPA will also increase the amount of state employed inspectors which will mean less inspectors on the federal budget, more money in the states’ economy, and potentially better conditions for the inspectors themselves. For example, this could reduce how far they have to drive and other factors contributing to high turnover in the sector.

3. SLPA will help small, independent processors scale up and stay viable

In various ways, the SLPA takes many of the best parts of the Meat and Poultry programs funded through the American Rescue Plan Act and sustains them at a lower level, but for a dependable amount of time. 

From all of the application cycles, it is clear there is a massive demand for these programs – and there will continue to be going into the future. Because of short timelines for the development of plans, applications, and payouts, many of these programs favored ‘shovel ready’ projects. The programs may  have been selecting for plants that already had plans for expansion, and not necessarily those plants and areas most in need of investment. Moreover,  know from similar payment structures that longer timelines and more dependable grant cycles provide longer-term stability for processors, and the farmers they serve, to feel they can make or plan to make the necessary investments to qualify for these programs.

SLPA authorizes a Processing Resilience Grant Program (PRGP), which would give the Agricultural Marketing Service the ability to continue to invest in currently existing or proposed federally inspected, state inspected, and exempt small and very small plants. This investment could include expanding infrastructure to increase harvest and processing capacity, developing food safety plans, and purchasing new equipment, for example, hide pullers that make it easier for small plants to make use of coproducts such as leather or by products like offal. To target funding to those plants most in need of this support this section limits grants to a maximum size of $500,000 and has a $20 million annual appropriations authorization. 

 “Strengthening and rebuilding local and regional food systems is an important step in ensuring a robust and resilient food system of the future.  Vibrant local processing adds to consumer choices, competition, economic development as well as opportunities for farmers especially small and disadvantaged farmers.  It is an important step in our response to the shortcomings in our food supply that the pandemic highlighted.”

– Greg Gunthorp, American Grassfed Association Board Member, farmer, processor, sustainable food system advocate extraordinaire 

4. SLPA will support a vibrant and competitive livestock and poultry industry

For too long, smaller processing and slaughtering operations have not been provided the resources, financing options, and markets they need to exist. Market consolidation has allowed large meat packers to become overwhelming price makers through alternative marketing agreements, contracts, market power in auction settings, and a variety of other techniques. Over time, proportionally, this lack of competition in the sector has pushed down farmer share of livestock and poultry sales, along with a variety of other factors such as retaliation and antitrust policy. 

By responsibly investing in small to mid sized and independent processing operations, we can create markets where meat processors thrive and farmers and consumers can benefit from more companies in competition both over their product and their dollar. 

“More local processing capacity means more money in the pockets of farmers and ranchers,” said NFU President Rob Larew, adding that “Building out more and better processing access for ranchers helps them circumvent the processing monopolies while also providing homegrown products to their communities.“

5. SLPA has broad support across industry, party, and place in our food system

Whether they raise cattle, poultry, or other animals such as bison, producers critically feel the need for more slaughtering options and to expand their different product streams. For processors that participate in a certification program, such as organic or pastured, this need is particularly acute. To maintain market certifications, producers must work with processors that comply with the relevant certification standards. These processors are incredibly rare and finding one within a reasonable travel distance from the producer is a consistent challenge. Processors hear this demand but, without many of the solutions the SLPA proposes, lack scale-appropriate financial products to be able to expand meaningfully to serve these niche and local markets. 

Farmers, ranchers, processors, local and national organizations all support SLPA, and are working to make sure it is part of the 2023 farm bill. 

“The Strengthening Local Processing Act offers necessary resources that small-scale USDA facilities like ours have been advocating for. The appropriate allocation of these resources, as proposed in the Strengthening Local Processing Act, will allow establishments like ours to continue to survive and thrive during these immensely challenging times,” Nichole Sargent, Owner, Southpaw Packing Company, INC. (DBA Windham Butcher Shop), based in Windham, Maine.

“We look forward to working with Senators Brown and Thune and Representatives Baird and Pingree to advance this legislation through Congress.” 

 – US Cattlemen’s Association president Justin Tupper

“The benefit that the Strengthening Local Processing Act will bring to small processors across the country will ensure that the meat industry will be stronger, better connected, and more informed. With regulatory and training assistance, we look forward to seeing this bill pass to help our world’s meat supply.” 

– Abbey Davidson, American Association of Meat Processors

“NFU is proud to support this bill and will work with our partners to pass it.” 

–NFU President Rob Larew

State and national farm organizations, ranging from the Ohio Farm Bureau to National Farmers Union endorse this bill.  NSAC looks forward to working with Congress and our partners to make sure these critical programs for farmers, ranchers, and the processors that work with them have the support they need to feed our local communities. For more information about the SLPA and to take action to support its inclusion in the 2023 Farm Bill, visit our website.

The post Strengthening Local Processing Act – Critical Reasons for Support in the Farm Bill appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: Senate Advances Agriculture Appropriations Bill

FY 2024 “Minibus” Maintains Support for Vital Sustainable Agriculture Programs

Washington, DC, November 1, 2023 – Today, the Senate passed its Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 “minibus” appropriations package, which includes discretionary funding for agriculture and food access programs such as Conservation Technical Assistance and the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program, among others. “Minibus” refers to a small package of different appropriations bills, which in this case consists of Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; Transportation, Housing and Urban Development; and Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration. 

“Under difficult constraints, the Senate crafted and has now passed a solid, bipartisan FY 2024 agriculture spending bill which maintains investment in conservation technical assistance and sustainable agriculture research while rejecting harmful riders and rescissions. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) thanks Senators Heinrich (D-NM), Hoeven (R-ND) Murray (D-WA), and Collins (R-ME), for their leadership in delivering a responsible agriculture spending bill, and looks forward to ensuring that the Senate’s proposal prevails outright in any final FY20204 appropriations legislation,” said Mike Lavender, NSAC Policy Director. 

Funding levels for several NSAC priority programs are as follows:

• Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, $50 million
• Organic Transition Research Program, $7.5 million
• WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, $20 million
• Conservation Technical Assistance, $800 million
• Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative, $10 million
• Office of Urban Agriculture & Innovative Production, $8.5 million

Earlier this year, both the House and Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittees failed to provide funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture & Innovative Production (OUAIP) despite interest in and support for the grants and cooperative agreements offered through OUAIP being at an all-time high. Therefore, NSAC led a group of 140 stakeholders in response to the potential cuts, delivering a letter to Congressional appropriators in July. Senator Stabenow’s (D-MI) steadfast leadership for OUAIP resulted in a successful floor amendment that restored funding for the office. Looking beyond appropriations, the upcoming farm bill reauthorization provides an opportunity to build on the growing support for OUAIP to ensure that it is no longer  subject to the annual appropriations process. Senators John Fetterman (D-PA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Representatives Alma Adams (D-NC-12) and Shontel Brown (D-OH-11) introduced the Supporting Urban and Innovative Farming Act (S. 2591, H.R. 5915) which would, among other improvements, provide mandatory funding that responds to the rapidly growing demand.

“NSAC applauds the adoption of an amendment that not only restores funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production but demonstrates the growing support for the Office within Congress. OUAIP’s activities extend beyond increasing proximity of fresh produce in urban centers; it is expanding the reach of USDA’s farm services to better serve the emerging population of urban, small-scale and indoor growers,” commented Hannah Quigley, NSAC Policy Specialist. 

As with much of the Senate bill, it is important to understand the larger context.  The confines of the debt-limit deal made funding increases across the bill challenging. The Senate bill falls short of providing an appropriation for the Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach Grant Program (FOTO), which includes both the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers (Section 2501). While FOTO receives $25 million in mandatory funding that is unaffected by annual appropriations, the program has also received additional discretionary appropriations in recent years. 

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Release: Senate Advances Agriculture Appropriations Bill appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Editor’s Note: This post is the second in a two-part series about seed breeding. This series explores the history of seed breeding in the US, the impacts of consolidation and concentration of seed breeding on farmers and our food systems, and what a more democratic seed breeding system might look like. This series was created in collaboration with the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance and Dr. Cathy Day of Cathy Day Consulting. Find the first post in this series here. 

In the first installment of this series, we explored how intellectual property protections have led to major worries about the depletion of plant diversity and fair access to genetic resources throughout our agricultural systems. These concerns urge us to reimagine the seed system model and envision a more participatory, democratic, and community-centered future for agriculture.

Democratizing the Seed Breeding System

A century following the enactment of the Plant Patent Act and a generation past the presumed conclusion of the Green Revolution, the seed industry has undeniably prospered financially, drawing extensively from what were once robust seed systems. However, over time,  advocates for sustainable seed systems now urge a transformative shift – away from the domination of  production-centered global agribusiness monopolies responsible for eroding the rich bounty of locally adapted and culturally significant crop diversity. These advocates, proponents of sustainable agriculture, emphasize the importance of seed diversity at the local food system level. They aim to defend not only the culturally significant and agrarian heritage deeply rooted in our agricultural practices but also to champion fair competition and foster innovation within the seed industry. 

Diminishing agrobiodiversity has rendered agriculture more susceptible to pests and diseases, reducing its adaptability in the face of shifting environmental conditions. Furthermore, the prevailing power dynamics within food systems and seed systems intensify this decline by limiting access to culturally significant seeds and foods for many communities, thereby impeding efforts to enhance dietary diversity within our local food system. This scarcity underscores the urgent need for a more inclusive and equitable approach to seed systems, one that prioritizes preserving diverse and culturally significant seeds for a resilient and sustainable agricultural future.

Reinvesting in farmers as pivotal stakeholders in our food system  empower those who have traditionally stewarded seeds within local communities. The dedication of local farmers to the sustained existence of diverse heirloom crop varieties is the foundation of local food systems. This commitment to seed-saving stands in opposition to the prevailing trend of globalization and standardization inherent in today’s large-scale production farms. While adherence to tradition may appear unsophisticated  in today’s market, it is this approach to farming that can allow farmers to more easily respond to the needs of their communities by localizing food production. Additionally, the shortening of the food supply chain can also empower communities, in the face of climate change, to gain greater autonomy and flexibility regarding their food access.   

Promoting open-source seed licensing programs presents yet another avenue to guide farmers, plant breeders, and researchers toward a more equitable and sustainable approach. As is seen more frequently in the software field, open-source licensing allows the recipient to use, modify, and share at will. Open source is a disruptive innovation model that both drives down profit and encourages collaboration. In contrast, the proliferation of patents and certificates that are held in the portfolios of very few has substantially constrained plant breeders, particularly with the consolidation of seed companies. Ostensibly, farmers will engage in crop diversity and sustainable agriculture when the benefits and incentives are sufficient to promote change.

Acknowledging the past and current trends of the seed industry, it is imperative that we reinvest through grants, research funding, and technical assistance programs in the vital role local farmers play in anchoring our local food systems. Equipping them to hold back the ever-encroaching loss of seed diversity which is foundational to a resilient and sustainable food system.By actively conserving and protecting the agricultural landscape that we share as opposed to technology, we can pave the way for a more inclusive and sustainable future.  By increasing financial and personnel support for the collection, preservation and evaluation of germplasm collections and encouraging increased public use of the rich sources of genetic diversity in U.S. germplasm collections, ensuring that dedicated funding streams are created for public plant and animal breeding research that priorities farmer led research, and specifically including provisions for this type of research in the request for applications in NIFA competitive grant research programs, we will not only preserves our agrarian legacies but sustain the communities that depend on these community members.

When looking at the impact of organic certification on our seed system, there are factors that work for and against the movement away from the commercialization and commodification that is dominant in our seed system. The organic certification standards stipulate that GMO derived inputs (including seeds) cannot be used. This encourages the use of different types of seeds including open pollinated, heirloom seeds that empower any growers to produce and save their own seed. Producing seeds from one’s own seed growing and saving practices removes the dependency on commercialized seed sources. Even though there is not a universally agreed upon definition of heirloom, it does seem generally agreed upon that heirloom varieties are at least 50 years old. Expanding the use of heirloom seeds helps preserve agrobiodiversity in our agricultural and food systems. 

Even though there is a lot of benefit from organic certification in the way of encouraging more healthy and sustainable practices, there are also barriers that reinforce commercialization and commodification. Participation in the organic certification system is dependent on having access to considerable resources. For a small to medium size farm, the average annual costs for organic certification can be somewhere between $700-$3,000. Navigating the organic certification process (and finding cost share programs) also requires considerable informational and technical resources.  Programs like the Organic Certification Cost Share Program (OCCSP) can help alleviate some of the costs of certification for small and mid-sized organic farm businesses, which are a core part of the domestic organic supply chain. However, OCCSP has struggled with funding challenges in the past, and risks losing funding if the Farm Bill does not pass on time. In the absence of a special provision during a Farm Bill extension, the Cost Share Program would expire, leaving thousands of organic farmers with a huge net increase in their annual certification costs. 

Policy Recommendations

With the challenges posed by a changing climate, producers need resilient and adaptive plant and animal breeds that can withstand drought, heat, flooding, disease, weed pressure, and other new or worsening stresses. Producers also need cultivars that can perform well in organic and other low-input sustainable production systems that protect soil health, natural resources, environmental quality, and climate stability. In the upcoming Farm Bill we need to re-establish connections between seeds and our larger food system. We need a mass re-allocation of funds towards the public sector from private institutions and entities to provide more channels for regional food system development. 

The Seeds and Breeds for the Future Act introduced by Senator Baldwin (D-WI), promotes the development of ready-to-use, regionally-adapted, and publicly available seed varieties and animal breeds. By directing funding through USDA research grants, this bill prioritizes the development of regionally and culturally appropriate public seeds (“cultivars”) and animal breeds, ensuring their accessibility to the public. This act can also help shift the market dominance that GMO seeds have had in the US by supporting regional adaptation of seeds and increased agrobiodiversity. The end result could be a future where we see growth in our domestic food production that puts cultural diversity and sustainable practices at the forefront.  In addition, this bill would direct USDA to create a public breed and cultivar research coordinator position within the REE mission area to ensure that USDA can continue to maintain and build a diversity of crops and livestock breeds with climate- adaptive and other beneficial traits that are broadly accessible to all US farmers. A robust set of policy recommendations for reinvigorating public plant and animal breeding can be found here. 

Everything starts with seeds. Whether you’re an organic farmer looking for seeds that will work with your specific organic growing practices or looking for wheat varieties adapted to your specific growing climate, seeds are the foundation of every piece of food we put on our plate and central to everything farmers do. The continued growth of sustainable and organic agriculture and local, healthy food systems across the country – along with farmers’ ability to meet the challenges of climate change and food security – depends on this critical first building block.

The post From Commodification to Conservation: Restoring Agrobiodiversity Through Seed Breeding – Part II:  appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

On October 1, 2023, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 – more commonly known as the 2018 Farm Bill – expired. The expiration did not come as a surprise, as Congress’ timeline for reauthorizing the 2018 Farm Bill has been increasingly drawn out for a variety of reasons such that neither the House nor Senate Agriculture Committees have yet been ready to unveil their bills.

Observers of federal food and agriculture policy will be familiar with the oft-repeated albeit misleading message that the impacts of an expired farm bill don’t really kick in until January 2024, with the start of the new crop year. While it’s true that there are new and significant impacts beginning in the new year, the consequences of allowing the 2018 Farm Bill to expire without a replacement are already beginning to mount.

There are three primary ways in which a program might be negatively impacted – or “stranded” – due to the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill. First, a program may lack funding beyond October 1, 2023. Second, a program may lack the legal authority to continue operating beyond that same date absent a farm bill extension. And third, a program could have no funding and no legal authority. With this simple framework in mind, this blog post takes a deep dive into the current and potential future impacts of the expired 2018 Farm Bill by examining which programs are stranded, and what it means for food and agriculture.

Local and Regional Food Systems

Due to NSAC member advocacy during the 2018 Farm Bill, many local and regional food system programs will not see a significant interruption following the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill on October 1, 2023.

While the 2023 Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) awards – including the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion, Regional Food System Partnership, and Value-Added Producer Grants – have not yet been announced, the review process has been well underway for months and we anticipate announcements will occur before the end of the year. Nevertheless, these initiatives that seek to develop new market opportunities for local farmers and food businesses could be impacted beginning in the FY2024 cycle. Despite permanent mandatory funding for LAMP, the authority for the grant program lapsed on October 1, 2023. Without an extension or reauthorization, the grant cycle may be interrupted. 

Similarly, states should be able to finish Senior Farmers Market Nutrition (SFMNP) programming without interruptions for the remainder of the 2023 season. Many states operate their program seasonally, distributing vouchers or funds to senior citizens at the beginning of peak market seasons, giving some breathing room for Congress to reauthorize the program. However, SFMNP’s operations could be impacted in calendar year 2024 if there is a significant delay in a Farm Bill reauthorization or extension.

Conservation and Climate

USDA conservation programs will remain largely unaffected by the expiration of the Farm Bill. This is a direct result of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which invested in and reauthorized several conservation programs ahead of the full Farm Bill reauthorization. These programs are:

• The Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
• The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)
• The Agriculture Conservation Easement Program (ACEP)
• Regional Conservation Program (RCPP)

Each of these programs has been reauthorized through 2031 and will continue to function without further action from Congress. The next Farm Bill may change or preserve this new authorization window, but only time will tell. 

While much of the Farm Bill-funded conservation work will continue uninterrupted, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) will not. Administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA), CRP conserves and improves soil, protects water quality, and provides wildlife habitat by establishing long-term cover on highly erodible land or land in need of conservation buffers that has previously been in row crop production. In exchange for cost-share and rental payments, farmers remove environmentally sensitive land from production and plant resource-conserving land cover to protect soil, water, and wildlife habitat.

CRP’s statutory authorization ended along with the rest of the Farm Bill on September 30, and as such no new work can occur within that program without action from Congress. Effective as of October 1st: 

• FSA will not approve CRP contracts for any signup types
• FSA will not process offers for enrollment in CRP for all signup types
• FSA will not authorize any CRP contract revisions or corrections

Contracts that were approved on or before September 30 will receive annual rental and cost-share payments, and signing incentive and practice incentive payments, as applicable.

Farmers interested in signing up for CSP and EQIP should check their state’s application ranking dates and contact their local service center to learn how and when to apply. For organizations interested in ACEP and RCPP, USDA recently announced changes and anticipated future grant making rounds.

Organics and Research

The programs highlighted so far lack the authority to operate, but do not lack funding authority – meaning that if their authority is extended, they will continue operating even without an additional infusion of funding. However, there are numerous notable programs that are currently stranded without funding. One such notable program is the National Organic Certification Cost Share Program (OCCSP). OCCSP does not have ‘permanent baseline’ funding and therefore without a provision that specifically offers continued funding and authorization for OCCSP, the cost share program will expire, leaving thousands of organic farmers with a huge net increase in their annual certification costs. 

What this means on the ground is that FSA and some state Departments of Agriculture are currently accepting 2023 OCCSP applications using remaining 2018 Farm Bill funds. Farmers who apply for OCCSP by October 31 can still receive reimbursements even with the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill. FSA generally announces the availability of cost share funding in April or May. Therefore, if Congress passes a Farm Bill before then with renewed funding, OCCSP should be able to operate without interruption in 2024. If, however, Congress does not include dedicated funding for OCCSP in a Farm Bill extension, this critical program will be unable to operate in 2024, unless and until a new Farm Bill is passed with new funding.

Unfortunately, OCCSP is not the only program without ‘permanent baseline’ beginning October 1, 2023. The Organic Production and Market Data Initiatives (ODI) and Scholarships for 1890s Institutions both lack permanent baseline, and will also need dedicated funding in any Farm Bill extension.

Due to NSAC member advocacy during the 2018 Farm Bill, the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Program (OREI) – like LAMP, described above – now has what is called ‘permanent baseline’ funding. This means that even if Congress extends the Farm Bill for another year, OREI is assumed to be part of that extension at its current funding level, which is $50 million annually. However, despite mandatory funding for the program, the authority for the grant program ends after 2023. Without an extension or reauthorization, the next grant cycle may be interrupted. 

Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach

The Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach (FOTO) program, which is a combination of the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development program (BFRDP) and the Outreach and Assistance to Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program (2501), was created in the 2018 Farm Bill in part to secure mandatory baseline funding for both 2501 and BFRDP. FY2023 grants for 2501 were just recently announced, with new BFRDP grants soon likely to follow. Despite mandatory funding for the program, the legal authority for the grant program lapsed on October 1, 2023. Therefore, like LAMP and OREI discussed above, absent an extension or reauthorization, the next grant cycle may be interrupted.

Farm Safety Net

By and large, the farm safety net – ranging from credit to crop insurance and commodity programs – will continue to operate with little interruption through the end of 2023. 

The Federal Crop Insurance Program – which is permanently authorized and funded at such sums as necessary in perpetuity by Congress – will continue to function without interruption in the absence of a Farm Bill reauthorization or extension. Permanent disaster programs, including the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program and programs to support livestock and fruit tree producers, are also authorized to continue. 

The Farm Bill also permanently authorizes USDA to make and guarantee loans, for which money is allocated by Congress in the annual appropriations process. Failure to reauthorize or extend the Farm Bill is not likely to impact the availability or servicing of farm loans. 

Meanwhile, commodity programs – including the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) programs – will continue to function, but only for a short time. The government is obligated to make payments until the end of the 2023 crop’s marketing year, or a full 12 months post-harvest into 2024. 

If the Farm Bill is not reauthorized or extended by January 1, 2024, commodity programs will begin to be replaced with “permanent law,” or non-expiring provisions established in the 1938 and 1949 Farm Bills. The first commodity to be impacted is dairy. Congress has maintained but suspended permanent law in each Farm Bill since the 1960s as a force-function to reauthorize the Farm Bill, lest the temporary suspension expire and force USDA to implement antiquated farm intervention programs.

Conclusion

Already, the consequences of allowing the 2018 Farm Bill to expire without a replacement are mounting, and the longer Congress waits to act, the greater the negative impact will be. NSAC encourages lawmakers to remain focused on passing a strong, bipartisan farm bill as soon as possible. In the meantime, an extension of the 2018 Farm Bill – with extended programmatic authorities and full funding for programs without permanent baseline – is the most critical step we can take to support farmers, ranchers, and food system stakeholders throughout the country.

The post What the Expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill Means for Food and Agriculture appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Earlier this month, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced over $27 million in grants to 41 organizations across the country for outreach and technical assistance to underserved and veteran farmers and ranchers. 

The Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program, more commonly known as the “2501 Program,” and administered by USDA’s Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement (OPPE), helps to ensure that historically underserved producers have equitable access to the information, programs, and opportunities that will help them to find success in agriculture.

Spotlight on FY 2023 Grantees

NSAC congratulates all of this year’s 2501 grant recipients and acknowledges the hard-working and dedicated community-based organizations that provide essential support directly to socially disadvantaged farmers every day, including the following NSAC member organizations:

California Farmlink will use their $750,000 grant to serve primarily Latino farmers and other socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers in California with training and technical assistance needed to protect farm income and prepare farm and ranch businesses. This technical assistance will provide support to farmers in accessing land, capital and USDA programs. The project will serve low-income, rural communities in over 30 California counties, primarily in the state’s Central Coast and Central Valley region.

Michigan Integrated Food & Farming Systems (MIFFS) will use their $749,621 grant to assist socially disadvantaged farmers and farmer veterans in owning and successfully operating viable farms and ranches in Michigan. MIFFS will support peer-to-peer networks in Michigan for beginning and historically underserved farmers and utilize their USDA technical assistance specialists to work one-on-one with socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and veterans to assist in navigating and applying for USDA programs, planning, and marketing. They will also facilitate an annual statewide conference with more than 25 workshops and host at least 2 annual USDA technical assistance clinics onsite in underserved communities to build relationships with local USDA staff and identify challenges and opportunities in order to respond to the needs of SDF/R and farmers and veterans in real time.

Cultivate Kansas City will use their $666,534 grant to expand and refine their New Roots Farm Training and Business Incubation program to increase the viability and sustainability of current program participants and provide greater support to program graduates. These refinement strategies include expanding outreach to other non-English speaking populations, securing land for program graduates, and providing education and demonstrations of effective product diversification. 

Foodshed Capital will use their $749,335 grant to provide a broader and more individualized array of comprehensive, customized support (CCS) to Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) regenerative farmers focused on financial literacy, bookkeeping and accounting, lending readiness, and long-term business viability. All programming will emphasize meeting underserved farmers where they are to remove barriers, increase the accessibility of programs and services, and help them build more successful businesses. Foodshed Capital will serve small-scale, beginning and established underserved farmers identifying as BIPOC, who utilize regenerative, climate-smart practices in the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, New York, Georgia, Vermont, and Washington DC regions.

A full list of 2501 grantees can be found here.

Program Background

For farmers of color, starting and managing a successful farming operation can present unique and difficult challenges. Farmers of color have not historically benefitted from vital USDA safety net programs to the same extent as their white counterparts, often due to overt discrimination, limited resources, and USDA’s inadequate outreach to these communities. This disparity disadvantages farmers of color in both the national and global economy and stifles the growth and prosperity of rural communities. As a result, farmers of color often face enormous challenges when looking to start or maintain viable and resilient careers in farming. Rising costs and limited availability of farmland, access to markets and infrastructure, discrimination, and worsening impacts of the climate crisis and natural disasters are just some of the challenges these farmers encounter. USDA created the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program in an effort to increase support for the operations of farmers of color, women, and military veterans (known collectively as “socially disadvantaged farmers” in statute). 

The 2018 Farm Bill combined the 2501 program with the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP) into a new umbrella program: the Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach (FOTO) program. Congress mandates that FOTO funds be divided equally between Section 2501 and BFRDP, with each program to receive $25 million in mandatory funding for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. FOTO received an additional $75 million from the Emergency Coronavirus Relief Act of 2020 in December 2020, and these additional funds were meant to be dispersed over the next few years. In FY22, 52 organizations were awarded 2501 grants, almost double the amount of awards granted in FY21 as a result of the additional investment from COVID relief funds. However, President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA-20) deal intended to avoid a catastrophic default on the United States’ debt, now known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, H.R. 3746, rescinded all unobligated funds from the $75 million appropriated to FOTO, resulting in less funding and fewer grantees for FY23 than originally expected.

The post More Than $27 Million in Grants Awarded to Support Historically Underserved Farmers  appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: NSAC Praises Introduction of the Supporting Urban & Innovative Farming Act of 2023 in the House

Washington, DC, October 18, 2023 – Representatives Alma Adams (D-NC-11), Shontel Brown (D-OH-X), Barbara Lee (D-CA-12), Jonathan Jackson (D-IL-1), Nikema Williams (D-GA-5), Eleanor Norton (D-DC), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30), Danny Davis (D-IL-7), Donald Payne Jr (D-NJ-10), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI-07),  Jamie Raskin (D-MD-8), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-5), James McGovern (D-MA-2), and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-18) recently introduced the Supporting Urban & Innovative Farming Act. These Congressional champions join their Senate colleagues in their efforts to secure support for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production, while improving content and service delivery for urban, suburban, and innovative producers throughout USDA’s service center network. 

“In 2023, the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production exponentially expanded their efforts to improve access to USDA services among urban, microscale, and innovative growers. They did so by opening 17 new urban service centers, expanding to 27 urban FSA county committees, and funding trusted community partners to lead outreach and technical assistance delivery across these geographies. The Supporting Urban & Innovative Farming Act would provide policy reforms and necessary investments to provide tailored technical assistance that responds to the unique needs of producers utilizing innovative growing techniques at a variety of scales in urban settings and beyond. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is extremely pleased to see such strong Congressional support for the Office and its activities, particularly among members of the House and Senate agriculture committees,” commented Hannah Quigley, NSAC Policy Specialist. 

“We’re excited to see the Supporting Urban and Innovative Farming Act move forward in the House and applaud Representative Elissa Slotkin for her support as a cosponsor. The bill is an important acknowledgement of the essential role urban agriculture plays in addressing environmental justice and disparities in public health,” said Jen Silveri, Co-Executive Director with Michigan Food & Farming Systems, an NSAC member.

The Supporting Urban and Innovative Farming Act of 2023 is Endorsed by:

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, CEA Alliance, RAFI-USA, Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, Chicago Food Policy Action Council, PASA Sustainable Agriculture, Cultivate Kansas City, Fair Food Network, Ag Noire, Michigan Food and Farming Systems

The bill text can be found here and a summary here. 

Background

The 2018 Farm Bill authorized a new Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (OUAIP) whose mission is to encourage and promote urban, indoor, and other innovative agricultural practices. While the name implies a restriction to urban areas, OUAIP supports a wide array of agricultural producers and businesses that lend themselves to urban environments but that have been adopted in both suburban and rural areas. OUAIP promotes a variety of practices such as community gardens, outdoor vertical production, greenhouses, indoor farms, hydroponic facilities, and more. 

Small and micro-scale agriculture and innovative agricultural production techniques have become increasingly popular in urban and suburban areas as a means for beginning growers to gain experience in farm production as well as to meet the immediate food needs of their surrounding communities. OUAIP has provided grant funding to support these producers and has also facilitated the cultural shift necessary in broader USDA services to respond to the unique needs of urban, innovative and indoor operations. 

Earlier this summer, the future of OUAIP was threatened when it was left out of House and Senate Appropriations Bills. NSAC and 140 other organizations, farms, and food businesses quickly responded to encourage Congressional Appropriators to rectify this issue. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD-8), among dozens of their Congressional colleagues, acted to restore its funding. The Supporting Urban and Innovative Farming Act will not only solve this issue by providing mandatory funding, but it will also provide pathways to further incorporate tailored focus and services for small- and micro-scale and controlled environment growing techniques across USDA.

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Release: NSAC Praises Introduction of the Supporting Urban & Innovative Farming Act of 2023 in the House appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

One of the key questions lingering over the 2023 farm bill reauthorization is whether Congress will approve a farm bill that builds climate resilience for the countless farmers whose livelihoods depend on it. While there is not one policy solution that can do this alone, the facts show that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is perhaps the single most ready-made tool for farmers to voluntarily tackle climate change. 

CSP is an incredibly popular program among farmers. In 2020, more than 20,000 farmers were turned away from the program due to a lack of funding. And in 2022, the number of farmers turned away from CSP due to a lack of funding had grown to over 24,000. In these two years, more than 75% of the farmers that applied to one of USDA’s most effective climate programs were turned away.

In August 2022, Congress passed the historic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a landmark piece of legislation that provided nearly $20 billion dollars to the United States Department of Agriculture for various programs capable of reducing greenhouse gasses across our food and farm system, including CSP. Through the IRA, CSP received a total of $3.25 billion, a crucial investment that is already helping to meet farmer demand and making progress toward climate goals through this high impact program.

But to understand just how impactful IRA spending in CSP is likely to be, this blog post examines both how CSP’s unique programmatic design creates greater conservation benefits than other approaches and how CSP spending in recent years shows a clear track record of delivering support to producers ready to implement climate friendly practices on their farms.

CSP’s Approach to Conservation

Farmers and ranchers are important managers of our shared air, water, and soil resources, and CSP recognizes and rewards this critical role. CSP is an innovative program for working farms, built on the belief that we must enhance natural resources and environmental protection as we simultaneously produce profitable food, fiber, and energy. By providing comprehensive conservation assistance to whole farms, CSP offers farmers the opportunity to earn payments for actively managing, maintaining, and expanding conservation activities like cover crops, rotational grazing, ecologically-based pest management, buffer strips, and the transition to organic farming – even while they work their lands for production.

CSP pays producers to improve, maintain, and actively manage conservation activities already in place at the time of application and to adopt new conservation activities during the life of the five-year contract. Payment amounts are determined by multiple factors, including income forgone, expected conservation benefits, and the costs incurred, which range from planning, design, materials, installation, labor, management, maintenance, and training.

When paying producers for their conservation activities, NRCS groups specific activities into three categories: conservation practices, enhancements, and bundles: 

Conservation Practices are the basic conservation activities that have long been supported by the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and other cost-share programs. Basic conservation practices might prove particularly helpful in meeting the stewardship threshold for additional priority resource concerns. As an example, Cover Crop is a basic Conservation Practice that NRCS compensates producers for in multiple conservation programs.

Enhancements are more substantial interventions and are largely unique to CSP. Conservation enhancements are designed to help farmers exceed the sustainable performance level for a given resource concern. In other words, they are intended to help solve natural resource problems and improve overall conservation performance and build on the good work accomplished by adopting an underlying conservation practice. As an example, NRCS considers the use of multi-species cover crops to improve soil health and increase soil organic matter an enhancement on the basic Cover Crop practice. Producers that implement this enhancement receive additional compensation in CSP.

Bundles are the most integrated elements of CSP supported interventions. Bundles are groupings of conservation enhancements that the agency feels may work well together to provide increased benefits when they are implemented as a group on particular types of farms. Participants who include bundles as part of their CSP contract receive a higher level of financial assistance to encourage the holistic approach to generate additional conservation benefits. As an example, NRCS offers a Cropland Soil Health Management System Bundle. This bundle lets producers choose a cover crop enhancement, a nutrient management enhancement, and pairs them with two no-till practice enhancements, thereby compensating producers that are willing to utilize multiple high value conservation activities together on the same acreage. This holistic approach to conservation generates far greater environmental benefit than implementing any basic conservation practice on its own.

Climate Friendly Spending In CSP

In addition to CSP’s approach of layering and enhancing conservation activities, rather than paying producers to adopt single practices, CSP has a track record of spending a high percentage of program funds on climate friendly practices.

NRCS, as the agency responsible for administering CSP, is also responsible for ensuring the will of Congress is carried out with respect to the IRA, which states that funds provided to CSP can only be spent on activities that mitigate or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. NRCS has generated its list of CSAF practices in order to funnel IRA funding to a subset of established conservation activities it believes accomplish this goal. While NSAC strongly disagrees with a handful of the activities selected for the list, on the whole the NRCS CSAF practices represent a solid set of classic conservation activities that have clear co-benefits for the climate and other pressing resource concerns.

While the CSAF practice list is a recent development at NRCS, nearly all of the activities on the list have existed in some shape or form at NRCS for years. This allows for old contracting data to be compared to activities on the current CSAF practice list. The tables below summarize contract data for fiscal year (FY) 21 and FY22, grouping financial assistance (cost-share provided to producers) by conservation activity codes. Basic practice codes use all numbers (ex. 340), enhancement codes start with an E (ex. E340C), and bundles start with a B (ex. B000CPL24). Table 1 provides a snapshot of how many CSAF conservation activities were funded through CSP contracts in FY21. 

Table 1. Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Practice, CSP, FY2021

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that over $153 million was delivered to farmers through CSP to implement CSAF conservation activities in FY21. That is more than 30% of the total program funding available. This is a large amount of money working to address climate change on farms, and all the evidence suggests that farmers are prepared to do more if funds are made available. During this same year, less than 20% of farmers applying to CSP were awarded contracts.

The IRA made $250 million available in FY23 for this same subset of practices on top of $1 billion in Farm Bill funding for CSP. That’s a 25% increase in total funding available, a modest increase for program with such a clear track record of oversubscription. Additionally, with a strong pattern at the agency of spending 30% of available program dollars on CSAF practices, obligating all IRA money for contracts containing these practices should not be a challenge. In fact, if only the $250 million of IRA funding was used to support CSAF practices in FY23, then we would see a decrease in proportion of total program dollars obligated to CSAF practices, from 30% to 20%. It is far more likely that with a larger total dollar amount available to address the backlog of program applications, we will see all IRA funding obligated, and an additional portion of Farm Bill baseline funding used to support more CSAF practices.

Table 2 illustrates this likelihood by showing increasing farmer interest in CSAF practices in FY22, with both total dollars spent on CSAF practices and total proportion of spending on CSAF practices rising.

Table 2. Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Practices, CSP FY2022

The trend of increased spending on CSAF in CSP is clear, with total funds delivered to farmers rising to over $234 million in FY23, accounting for 38% of program spending. This shows a significant history of increased funding in CSP translating directly to more CSAF practices on the landscape.  CSP had $750 million dollars in FY21 for new contracts and $800 million in FY22, and demonstrates the program’s ability to easily obligate the total amount of IRA funding allocated in FY23.

Conclusion

CSP has been successfully funding hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of CSAF practices for years. Over the life of the 2018 Farm Bill, increased money available in the program has resulted in an immediate increase in the number of CSAF practices funded on farms across the country. Further, the total annual program spending on CSAF practices in recent years is nearly equal to recently obligated IRA funding. All together, these facts show that CSP is perhaps the single most ready-made tool for farmers to voluntarily tackle climate change in the country, and therefore is among the wisest investments made through the IRA. Ensuring this great work is made permanently possible inside CSP in the next Farm Bill needs to be a top priority for all of Congress.

The post Building Resilience Through the Conservation Stewardship Program appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Editor’s Note: This post is the first in a two-part series about seed breeding. This series will explore the history of seed breeding in the US, the impacts of consolidation and concentration of seed breeding on farmers and our food systems, and what a more democratic seed breeding system might look like. This series was created in collaboration with the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance.

Seeds are an integral underpinning of our food system. Over the past decades we have seen a hyper consolidation of seed systems that has led to a dominant culture of seed commodification. Over time, the consolidation and commodification of seeds has eroded the resilience of our food systems,  diminishing the agrobiodiversity of crops cultivated in the US at an alarming rate.  Support for resilient and diversified seed systems is critical in the upcoming Farm Bill and can also be a direct pathway to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities and climate change strategies.

The History of US Seed Breeding

For most of the history of domesticated crops, those who grew crops saved seeds from one growing season to the next. They were able to identify the best of what they had grown in one season and set aside enough seeds to plant the following season. That meant farmers could maintain and improve the traits that mattered most to them and that best fit local growing conditions. Seed saving was also an important element of maintaining food traditions. From the high value placed on the flavor and texture of Carolina Gold rice by generations in the South to growing the right tepary beans for a favorite Southwestern dish, the particularities of foods matter for more than just their appropriateness for a climate or soil. They underpin what it is to feel at home; what it means to sense one’s lineage through food in a single place or across oceans. 

In short, being able to save seed in prior centuries was central to adapting to an environment and to carrying on the most-valued rhythms of one’s ancestors by preserving culturally appropriate foods.

However, during the nineteenth century, these patterns of seed growing and saving began to change.

Before 1862, the US Patent Office was mailing millions of free seed packages to farmers across the country. One of the core functions of the USDA, upon its foundation in 1862, was the collection and public distribution of germplasm, or seeds. By the end of the 19th century, a third of USDA’s budget was devoted to germplasm collection and distribution. USDA distributed seeds to farmers for free, encouraging growers to save and share seed and to experiment with any crop that could become economically important to US agriculture. With the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862, land grant universities began to establish regional seed breeding programs. While these breeding programs furthered the base of scientific knowledge around plant breeding and led to significant increases in yields, farmers were slowly pushed out of their historical role as the primary stakeholders in seed saving and development. 

Although free seed distribution programs were immensely popular among farmers, emerging private seed breeders and horticulturalists lobbied the federal government to end the program in 1924. The shift toward commercialization of seed began in earnest.

Among the most pivotal changes to growing crops was the development of corn hybrids in the first decades of the 20th century and the subsequent commercialization of hybrid corn in the 1930s. For the first time, seed-saving for a staple crop began to be infeasible, and private breeding became paramount. This marked another distinct point of transition to the professionalization of seed breeding. The resulting 20th century trend was toward decreasing control of seedstock by growers and more and more breeding by land-grant university researchers and–especially toward the end of the 20th century–by large transnational corporations. Such changes reduced the overall resilience of the agroecological system.

Seed Breeding Commercialization and Food System Resilience

As corporations increasingly became the main seed breeders and therefore the arbiters of available seed, the diversity of seed options steadily declined, with substantial impacts on overall crop diversity. 

Robust, diverse food systems rely on varied seed to respond to challenges like pests and disease, but also to respond to the increasingly challenging conditions created by climate change. The responses to challenges of climate change, including pests and disease, will be most effective if they include perennial crops. Perennial crops, many of which have deeper roots, offer resilience to drought, flood, and disease more so than annual crops. Moreover, they have more potential to contribute to greenhouse gas mitigation via carbon sequestration. By expanding the diversity of our seed system, seed and planting stock for perennial systems will also be an important element of building resilience. 

However, given the substantial shift away from public seed research and toward a corporate-driven research agenda, along with the consequently common focus on production of genetically modified organisms, the approach to climate mitigation and adaptation in seed breeding has been narrowly focused. For example, identifying drought tolerance characteristics offers some opportunity to decrease the stress on certain crops. However, given the wide range of new stressors on crops, from shifting pest pressures, smoke stress, and increasingly high temperatures, to more stochastic spring and fall freeze events, a much more holistic and comprehensive approach to seed breeding is needed.

A better system would allow farmers to diversify the range of species they produce. This would further enable farmers to drastically cut pesticide use and increase habitat availability for a wide range of species. This diversity helps build more resilient farms as compared to farms where only a single trait of a single species is altered. 

In other words, effectively responding to present  and future climate challenges means thinking ahead about the seeds we will use in a much broader light than is possible under the dominance of corporate breeders. Identifying the traits that work with weather impacts like heat, drought, floods, and smoke is important. But part of that adaptability comes from having multiple different species of both plants and animals in the same space. For example, farmers in highly variable climates like Niger succeed best by having a range of species and varieties mixed across the landscape so that every year something will thrive. Moreover, the needed shift away from industrial farming means identifying effective mixes of crops that produce nutrients in place. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions means moving away from the use of high-energy and polluting nitrogenous fertilizers. Diverse plants and manure must take their place. We can look to the many species that represented the exclusive sources of nitrogen and other nutrients for farming in use before 1950 and especially in prior centuries. 

However, the move away from a focus on corporate breeding, to one that incorporates more climate-adaptive and culturally relevant crops, requires understanding the system that brought us to this point.

The Corporate Consolidation of Seed Breeding

Above, we discussed the transitions in seed breeding that occurred during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the shift from farmer-led seed saving to private breeding companies. Yet, the early private seed industry bears little resemblance to the commodified industry we see dominating farming today. Small and regionally-based private seed companies acted mainly as breeders of regional seed and distributors of publicly developed seed varieties. In contrast, today’s dominant players genetically engineer and mass produce seed alongside complementary inputs including fertilizers and pesticides. This is seen repeatedly with major field crop seed corporations selling corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, sugar beets, and alfalfa.

In the 1930’s, as the market shifted toward hybrid varieties with desirable traits, companies developed exclusive cultivars. The increased demand for agricultural exports generated by World War II, and with continued research breakthroughs, led to the mass acceptance of hybridized seed. Moreover, in the wake of the war, the Marshall Plan converted bomb factories to fertilizer factories, rapidly creating an entire system of hybrid seeds and manufactured inputs upon which farmers rapidly became reliant.

Though plants and seed were historically interpreted to be products of nature and thus, not patentable per existing patent law, the American Association of Nurserymen successfully lobbied the federal government to pass the Plant Patent Act of 1930. This became the first statute allowing biological materials to be patented, though this applied only to unique asexually reproducing plants. You can see the difference between the two patent types in their definitions:

Utility Patent: The right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing the invention. May be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.

Plant Patent: May be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.

For decades, USDA and Congress remained hesitant to extend patents to sexually reproducing plants, fearing that patents on seeds would lead to market concentration and less innovation. However in 1970, in the face of mounting pressure from burgeoning seed companies, Congress passed the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA). Under the PVPA, breeders could obtain a Plant Variety Protection Certificate (PVPC) for new varieties. Farmers, land grant universities, and other seed companies were still allowed to save seed protected with PVPCs, but they could no longer sell the seed to other farmers except under license from the PVPC owner. Seed companies and breeders could still freely use protected varieties as parent material in their own breeding programs. Evidence suggests that in its first decade, the PVPA actually increased the number of distinct plant varieties available to farmers, but this arrangement did not last.

The 1980 Supreme Court decision, Diamond v. Chakrabarty allowed newly engineered oil-eating bacteria to be patented, effectively signaling that inventors of any human-made microorganism could be granted utility patents – including plants. The US Patent and Trademark Office was soon approving thousands of utility patent applications for plants that reproduce sexually. Importantly, where PVPA protections were explicitly designed to reinforce the rights of researchers and farmers to save protected seed, utility patent holders can now forbid this.

The expansion of intellectual property protections in the 1980s occurred in tandem with the evisceration of antitrust policies and merger guidelines under the Reagan administration. These policy shifts laid the foundations for a “merger mania” in the 1980s and late 1990s, giving agribusiness corporations the ability to buy-out potential competitors or otherwise expand their services and markets unchallenged. 

Today’s dominant agriculture corporations genetically engineer and mass produce seed alongside complementary inputs including fertilizers and pesticides, as is seen with major field crop seed corporations selling corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, sugar beets, and alfalfa. Private investment in food and agriculture systems are designed to maximize a narrow concept of economic efficiency which fails to prioritize the well-being of small family farmers, rural communities, or the land.

“In 2019, US farmers spent $118 billion to purchase seed and plants, fertilizers, animal feed, and agricultural chemicals. The cost of total farm input expenditures has increased almost $80 billion since 2009, a classic symptom of an industry that has become too concentrated. Bayer, Corteva, Limagrain, Chem-China, and BASF exclude competitors with control of at least 50 percent of the seed and agrochemicals markets by raising the price of inputs for farmers (including with a novel “technology fee”) without risking their own market dominance. 

To strictly analyze the cost of seed, consider that corn farmers who paid $26.65 per planted acre of seed in 1990 paid $93.48 in 2019. This represents a dramatic increase of roughly 350 percent, beyond the rate of inflation, following the biotechnology merger-mania and the co-opting of the seed industry.” -Billy Hacket, NSAC

The rise of private seed breeding and the decrease in public investment in seed breeding has led to the loss of national control over food systems. This has resulted in the growth of monopoly power in input markets that could drive up input prices; technology determinism, where farmers choices may be limited to technologies favored by private developers, such as hybrid seed and GM crops; and a preference to serve the needs of large commercial farms at the expense of small-medium size farmers, farmworkers, rural communities, and the environment.

The Value and Institutions of Public Plant Breeding

By contrast, over the last several decades, publicly funded agricultural research has led to the advancement of countless innovative techniques and practices that have helped farmers across the country increase their profitability and sustainability. This public research and development (R&D) investment is the primary driver of long-term productivity growth in US agriculture. In addition to increasing farm productivity, public agricultural R&D investment also supports improvements in natural resources and forestry management, helps advance rural development, and enhances food safety and quality. All farmers need access to high-quality research; and investing in research at the intersection of agriculture and climate change is critical to both short-term and long-term efforts to protect the viability of the agricultural industry. 

Publicly funded research institutions include not just work at land-grant universities, but at USDA itself. Research, education and extension at USDA is carried out by four main agencies; 

• Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is USDA’s “chief scientific in-house research agency” and plays an important role in long-term agricultural research. This research is used to help farmers meet and adapt to challenges while increasing overall productivity. The agency has over 660 research projects within 15 National Programs at 90+ research sites.
• USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) provides critical, objective, data-driven research and analysis that identifies economic trends and challenges for producers across a range of topics. This research is essential to ensure agricultural businesses, service providers, and policymakers are making sound decisions.
• National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts hundreds of surveys, including the Census of Agriculture, every year and prepares reports covering virtually every aspect of US agriculture. Production and supplies of food and fiber, prices paid and received by farmers, farm labor and wages, farm finances, chemical use, and changes in the demographics of US producers are a few examples.
• The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) was created under the 2008 Farm Bill to elevate federally funded competitive agricultural research within USDA. NIFA administers all competitive agricultural research grant programs authorized in the farm bill, such as the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) that funds projects in public plant and animal breeding, sustainable agriculture systems, small and mid-sized farms, rural economies, and many other topics.

Land-grant universities and other “non-Federal institutions” perform about 70 percent of US public agricultural research. USDA agencies, such as ARS perform the remainder. USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) administers most of the funds for extramural research funded by USDA. Extramural research programs like the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension Program (SARE), Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), Organic Research and Education Initiative (OREI), and Organic Transitions Program (ORG) are available to land-grant institutions, farmers, non-profits, private entities, and individuals. 

Despite its strong record of serving public needs, according to a 2022 report by the Economic Research Service (ERS), US public agricultural R&D investment has fallen by about one-third since its peak in 2002. Underscoring the important role of public research, the study found that every dollar invested in publicly funded agricultural research generates $20 in economic activity. 

In its key public role, USDA-funded research can seek to optimize the balance among production, nutrition security, environmental services, and socio-economic sustainability.

The post From Commodification to Conservation: Restoring Agrobiodiversity through Seed Breeding – Part I:  appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Earlier this summer the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (OUIAP) announced a series of new investments that build on their short but impactful history since their inaugural awards in 2020 

OUAIP was established in the 2018 Farm Bill and tasked with a wide variety of responsibilities to support the development and success of urban, indoor, and other emerging agricultural practices. These practices are diverse and can include growing efficiently in microlots or inside warehouses, food waste reduction strategies, and community composting. OUAIP implements strategies to ensure their success while fostering community food security through networks of growers, partners, and community members. 

While OUAIP is housed within the Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS), it works across United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) agencies. For example, OUAIP works with the Farm Service Agency (FSA) to ensure support for all types of agricultural practices regardless of the size of an operation, where it is located, or the techniques used for production. Beyond farm production and conservation services, they also partner with the Food and Nutrition Service and Agricultural Marketing Service to support the development of community networks that connect producers with local food access initiatives. 

Expanding Access to Services

The latest announcement of investments in July seeks to serve the unique needs of growers in urban and indoor settings through the establishment of seventeen new Urban Service Centers. These centers will include co-located FSA and NRCS staff, just like the existing 2,300 USDA Service Centers, but with a focus on supporting urban and innovative growers in navigating farm loans, conservation program access, and other risk management resources to ensure the success of their farm. 

In the past, urban, micro-scale growers, or agricultural operations using new and innovative practices risked traveling to a service center just to be turned away due to a staff member not having resources to support them. OUAIP has sought to address these issues by locating the Urban Service Centers in areas with high concentrations of urban and micro-scale growers and implementing updated procedures that address historical barriers for participation among these growers.

Under the initial direction from Congress, OUAIP established 17 pilot FSA Urban County Committees. In an ongoing effort to ensure FSA and NRCS services respond to the dynamic, place-based needs of farmers, OUAIP announced ten additional committees in July, bringing the total to 27 committees across 22 states. 

These committees serve an important role in tailoring each center’s services to the geographical needs of the agricultural community: hiring local staff, reviewing local administrative area boundaries, supporting local policy development, and conducting outreach to growers regarding services offered by USDA. 

Other Recent Investments with Far-Reaching Impacts

In an ongoing effort to expand the reach of OAUIP’s services, the office utilized funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to establish agreements with 17 local organizations to conduct outreach, education, and technical assistance to farmers within the communities of the Urban Service Centers. 

This initiative seeks to build upon existing, trusted relationships within communities while building local organizational capacity to support farmers and raise awareness of programs and resources available at the USDA Urban Service Centers. Each agreement is unique and reflects input from urban and innovative farmers in the area. Generally, each organization will conduct activities related to outreach, host trainings and workshops, provide individual technical assistance, and offer capacity-building mini grants to farmers. 

Since 2020, OUAIP has awarded over 180 grants totaling an investment of more than $48 million to non-profits organizations, local governments, and schools. And while “urban agriculture” is in the title of the grants, these funding opportunities are not limited to urban areas and their investments can be seen in suburban and rural communities across the United States. These funds have supported grant recipients in: 

• Training producers in new growing techniques to more effectively use resources and adapt to climate change.
• Establishing incubator farms that provide subsidized access to lands, equipment, and water.
• Creating jobs and promoting workforce development for youth and aspiring farmers using indoor and hydroponic production technologies. 
• Expanding access to nutritious foods through networks of gardens and aggregation systems that route produce to food insecure communities. 

La Semilla Food Center, an NSAC member and recent awardee, from Anthony, New Mexico, will use their funds to accelerate existing and innovative community-based urban agriculture food production efforts through youth training and mentoring in desert-adapted agroecological farming, such as their Raices Youth Program and Food and Farm Apprenticeship Program. This project will enhance operations of community urban farms, advancement of ancestral and emerging technologies germane to desert agroecology, and increase access to fresh and locally grown produce, while inspiring a new generation of urban agriculture practitioners, farmers, and local food advocates.

Ensuring Continued Success through the Farm Bill 

Congress is poised to grow the success of the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production in the upcoming Farm Bill reauthorization. Congressional leaders – Senators John Fetterman (D-PA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ed Markey (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) – have already taken steps to ensure this is the case by introducing the Supporting Urban and Innovative Farming Act (S. 2591). 

Since OUAIP received its first appropriation in 2020, it has invested over $57 million in 184 grants and 82 cooperative agreements to increase the capacity of urban agriculture, innovative producers, and municipal composting initiatives in local communities across 43 states and Puerto Rico. Yet this is only a fraction of the demand for the office. Since 2020, OUAIP has received more than 1,500 applications for the urban agriculture and innovative production grants, but due to limited funding only 12% of requests have been awarded. 

The Supporting Urban and Innovative Farming Act would increase funding for the office to better respond to program demand, while establishing mandatory funding so that OUAIP is not subject to the annual appropriations process.  It would go further to provide policy reforms to improve the reach of its core programs by: 

• expanding grant opportunities to farmer cooperatives,
• providing microgrants directly to farmers for equipment and other impactful, small investments,
• utilizing trusted community partnerships to lead outreach and delivery of services through cooperative agreements,
• supporting communities in scaling composting and food waste initiatives statewide, and
• investing in research and data collection that allows for USDA to better serve the needs of urban and innovative producers. 

For more information about the bill, visit our website.

The post New but Mighty Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: Crop Insurance Bills Would Level the Playing Field, Save Taxpayers Billions 

Washington, DC, September 26, 2023 – Today, the Assisting Family Farmers Through Insurance Reform Measures Act, or the AFFIRM Act, was introduced by Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-3). This bill presents important reforms to improve the federal crop insurance program to better serve U.S. farmers equitably and use taxpayer dollars more efficiently.

“The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has long supported provisions that will level the playing field for small, beginning, and diversified farms by introducing common-sense data transparency, payment limits, and means tests to the federal crop insurance program,” says Billy Hackett, NSAC Policy Specialist. “While private crop insurance companies and the largest, highest-income commodity farms benefit from an artificial, taxpayer-funded profit guarantee, 80 percent of farms cannot access insurance altogether.”

The AFFIRM Act includes a $125,000 annual cap to crop insurance premium discounts that would impact less than one percent of farms, an adjusted gross income means test, and a subsidized guaranteed profit rate for private insurance companies reduced from 14.5 percent to 8.9 percent. The Act would also require USDA to disclose information on the companies and farmers that receive subsidies to better account for billions of taxpayer dollars. Together, these reforms are projected to save up to $35 billion over 10 years.

“The cost of the federal crop insurance program has quietly tripled in three years, to $19.3 billion in 2023. That additional spending has not curbed prices at the grocery store for struggling Americans, nor has it included an expansion of the safety net to underserved farmers,” continued Hackett. “Program costs will only continue to grow without a shift in approach. Lawmakers serious about protecting both farmers and consumers, while reducing rising safety net costs, should invest in helping farmers diversify and adopt soil health practices that improve on-farm resilience against worsening floods, droughts, and storms.”

The federal crop insurance program is the most expensive program authorized in the farm bill, outside of nutrition. It is also the only major farm subsidy program without any payment limits or means tests that protect against wasting taxpayer dollars. These facts become especially relevant in a farm bill process where there is no new spending. 

Read the full bill text here.

About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Release: Crop Insurance Bills Would Level the Playing Field, Save Taxpayers Billions appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Last week, both the House and Senate were back in session after more than a month of Congressional recess. As of posting, Congress has one week – just 4 session days – until the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 on September 30.

Beginning with the start of FY2024 on October 1, funding for the federal government will – absent a continuing resolution (CR) – expire, as will the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, better known as the 2018 Farm Bill. Amidst this focus on appropriations, both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are continuing to draft the farm bill, but the looming government shutdown is slowing progress.

This post looks at where things stand across all of these moving pieces as Congress enters a crucial week of fiscal negotiations that will undoubtedly impact on federal food and farm policy.

Annual Appropriations

As a refresher, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved their respective versions of FY2024 Agriculture Appropriations legislation. And, the two proposals could not be more different.

In late July, the House of Representatives tried to bring its FY2024 Agriculture Appropriations bill to the House floor despite an exceedingly narrow path to passage – House Freedom Caucus members wanted to see even deeper cuts, yet including deeper cuts risked losing the support of moderate GOP members. Ultimately, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-20) was unable to bring the FY2024 Agriculture spending bill to the House floor.

Fast forward to September, Speaker McCarthy abandoned plans to bring it to the floor this month. Meanwhile, the Senate has spent the past week considering its own FY2024 “minibus” – another name for a small package of different appropriations bills. In this case, the minibus includes Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; Transportation, Housing and Urban Development; and Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration. 

While the Senate began consideration of the minibus on September 18 with hopes of painless bipartisan approval, progress was halted when Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), among others, objected to the Senate’s consideration of the minibus as they attempted to secure floor votes on specific amendments. This delay has not only prevented passage of the bill, but also consideration of amendments – including an essential amendment that would restore funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production. Ultimately, the Senate was unable to reach an agreement this week on how to move the minibus forward, meaning that any next steps for FY2024 Agriculture appropriations are likely on hold until at least October.

Government Shutdown

Now, if you’re wondering whether this flurry of activity will help stave off a government shutdown beyond September 30, the answer is, unfortunately, no. The recent FY2024 appropriations activity merely serves to set the stage for fiscal negotiations later this fall.

The top issue facing Congress in the final week of September is whether or not it can reach an agreement to fund the government beyond September 30. While these negotiations are developing by the minute, it currently seems likely that the federal government will shutdown for an undetermined period of time beginning October 1. So what, exactly, would a government shutdown mean for agriculture?

Each agency and department throughout the federal government, including USDA, is required to develop a government shutdown contingency plan, which you can find here. As of posting, the USDA’s updated contingency plan for October 2023 has not yet been finalized. However, we expect that once posted, the USDA’s updated contingency plan will be relatively similar to the plan used during the 2018-2019 government shutdown.

While USDA will need to keep a number of employees working to handle critical functions, non-essential programs will be forced to a halt. In the past, essential activities have included but are not limited to: food safety inspections, wildfire suppression, nutrition assistance programs, and monitoring imports for pests and diseases. The number of employees that will be furloughed will depend on how long the shutdown lasts. 

In particular, we anticipate that a shutdown would adversely impact farmers and ranchers who rely on county-level USDA offices of the Farm Service Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. These local offices would close, and while the impact from the closures may not be felt immediately, the longer the shutdown runs the more acutely farmers and stakeholders will feel the impact.

A shutdown would also impact the timing of the 2023 Farm Bill Reauthorization. The House and Senate Agriculture Committees rely on both the USDA and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for the key roles they play in offering technical assistance and estimating the budget implications of various proposals. Because a shutdown would hamstring both USDA and CBO, it would also further elongate the 2023 Farm Bill reauthorization timeline. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) recently said to expect Senate action on the farm bill in December.

2023 Farm Bill

Amidst all the fiscal negotiations outlined above, Congress is still trudging forward on the 2023 Farm Bill reauthorization. However, Congress will not pass a new farm bill prior to the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill on September 30, and does not at this time intend to extend the 2018 bill beyond its expiration. The impacts of an expired farm bill vary across programs. Many USDA programs will continue – in one fashion or another – when the farm bill expires. For example, the crop insurance program will continue unaffected, as will the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

In the past, many priority programs for NSAC would have been impacted negatively without a farm bill extension. Thankfully, due to hard fought wins in the 2018 Farm Bill, most of these programs now meet a key budget requirement that provides them funding even without an extension. Absent an extension of the 2018 farm bill, we expect that programs that receive mandatory permanent funding – for example, the Local Agriculture Market Program – will be able to continue in nearly all functions, with the exception of being able to sign new contracts or agreements beginning October 1, until there is an extension or a new farm bill. Taken altogether, Congress seems to feel relatively little pressure to pass an extension until the end of 2023, since most programs will continue more or less on autopilot – absent a government shutdown – over the next few months.

The post What’s At Stake: Appropriations, Shutdown, and Farm Bill appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: Fresh Produce Procurement Reform Act Introduced in Both Houses

Bill Would Increase Availability of Nutritious Produce and Support Local Economic Development 

Washington, DC, September 20, 2023 – Today, Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) and David Valadao (R-CA-22) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced the Fresh Produce Procurement Reform Act (Procurement Reform Act) in both the House and the Senate. The Procurement Reform Act directs the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) to implement a fresh produce purchasing program that prioritizes purchasing from beginning, small and mid-size, and socially disadvantaged farmers and distributes high quality produce to food insecure communities nationwide. 

USDA spends roughly $6 billion annually on domestically produced or processed foods that are distributed through a variety of programs, such as the Emergency Food Assistance and National School Lunch Programs. However, most of these foods are shelf-stable items. Only around $5 million is spent on fresh produce, without any consideration of whether those fresh items are sourced from regional farmers. 

“The Fresh Produce Procurement Reform Act is an important piece of the federal procurement reform puzzle. It offers an opportunity for local farmers, food hubs, and distributors to provide ready access to fresh, locally produced, nutritious food for community food assistance programs,” commented Hannah Quigley, NSAC Policy Specialist, in response to the bill introduction.  

Specifically, the Procurement Reform Act directs USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service to implement a fresh produce purchasing program that: 

• Contracts with growers, distributors, food hubs, nonprofit organizations, or cooperatives to aggregate and deliver fresh produce to a wide variety of recipient organizations addressing food insecurity in vulnerable communities. 
• Competitively awards contracts considering factors other than the lowest-price bid, such as the entities’ existing farmer and community relationships, whether they source from local and regional farmers, and their experience distributing fresh produce. 
• Requires contracted entities to provide a variety of fresh produce offerings that are locally grown, as seasonally available, and include a focus on culturally important offerings. 
• Offers technical and financial assistance to growers to upgrade food safety equipment and on best practices for navigating AMS contracts. 

“Over the last three years we’ve seen local food procurement programs emerge as powerful market development tools that help small farms prosper and enhance local food systems. The Fresh Produce Procurement Reform Act would build on this success and reduce the barriers that small-scale producers face in selling to USDA procurement programs,” said Roland McReynolds, Executive Director of Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. 

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Release: Fresh Produce Procurement Reform Act Introduced in Both Houses appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) invested billions of dollars in working lands conservation programs, making more money available to all farmers and for all conservation activities. 

IRA dollars function as a supplemental pool of funding for four conservation programs: the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP), and the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP.) In addition to the IRA-created supplemental pools, each program also has a separate pool of Farm Bill funding that is still available for all traditional conservation work that the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has funded for decades. In practice, separate IRA and Farm Bill funding pools mean that farmers hoping to implement Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry (CSAF) practices, conservation activities that have long been available in EQIP and CSP, will receive funding from the IRA pool created within the conservation program they apply to. Similarly, farmers hoping to implement conservation practices that are not on the NRCS CSAF practice list will be funded out of the Farm Bill funding pool that still exists in each conservation program.

With all of the money that IRA made available now and in coming years, what does this increased access really look like for farmers hoping to implement CSAF practices as well as other conservation activities? What does historic demand for different conservation practices tell us about the likely outcome of spending conservation dollars from two separate funding pools? Looking at FY21 and FY22 spending in CSP and EQIP helps to illustrate.

IRA Has  Dramatically Improved Access to Conservation Programs

In FY21, CSP had a total of $750 million dollars available for new contracts addressing all resource concerns. That same year, CSAF practices accounted for over $153 million of CSP obligations, or about 30% of program funding. Similarly, in FY22, CSP had a total of $800 million available for new contracts and obligated over $234 million supporting CSAF practices, accounting for 38% of program spending (see Appendix for Tables 1 & 2). Compare this spending to the $250 million IRA allocated to CSP in FY23. If we assume similar demand for CSAF practices in FY23 as in recent years, then the IRA funding pool is tailor made to meet that demand. This leaves dramatically more Farm Bill funding available to meet farmer demand for all other conservation activities.

Graph 1

As Graph 1 clearly shows, IRA’s separate, additional funding pool for CSAF practices gives NRCS the ability to meet historic demand for CSAF practices and then some, leaving all of the Farm Bill funding pool available to meet farmer demand for traditional conservation activities. Compared to FY22, IRA stands to help double the amount of CSP funds available for traditional conservation activities in FY23, with as much as $1 billion dollars up for grabs. Only $566 million went to traditional conservation activities in FY22.

Looking at EQIP tells a similar story. In FY21, EQIP obligated roughly $1.267 billion dollars via new contracts addressing all resource concerns. That same year, CSAF practices accounted for over $381 million of EQIP obligations, or about 30% of program funding. Similarly, in FY22, EQIP obligated about  $1.282 billion via new contracts, over $404 million of that supporting CSAF practices, accounting for 31% of program obligations (see Appendix for Tables 3 & 4). Compare this spending to the $250 million IRA allocated to EQIP in FY23. Again, if we assume similar demand for CSAF practices in FY23 as in recent years, then the IRA funding pool inside EQIP is a near perfect tool to meet that demand. This leaves dramatically more Farm Bill funding available to meet farmer demand for all other conservation activities.

Graph 2.

Again, Graph 2 shows that IRA’s supplemental funding pool for CSAF practices gives NRCS the ability to meet historic demand for CSAF practices, thus freeing up more of the Farm Bill funding pool available to meet farmer demand for traditional conservation activities. Compared to FY22, IRA stands to meet roughly 62% of historic demand for CSAF practices in EQIP, making $250 million dollars of the Farm Bill funding pool available for traditional conservation practices.

Conclusion

The 2023 Farm Bill can both establish a dedicated, permanent source of funds for farmers addressing climate change within their operations and significantly improve producers’ ability to get support for traditional conservation practices. Congress should seize the nearly unprecedented opportunity to strengthen investments in climate-friendly agriculture and traditional conservation for decades to come.

Appendix

Table 1. Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Practice, CSP, FY2021

Table 2. Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Practices, CSP FY2022

Table 3. Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Practices, EQIP FY2021

Table 4. Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry Practices, EQIP FY 2022

Endnotes

1. One additional note for interpreting EQIP data presented here, projected totals in FY23 are estimated using budget authority for both IRA and Farm Bill funding totals, whereas the previous two fiscal years use obligated financial assistance data reported in NRCS’ annual protracts data set. The Farm Bill stepped up funding in EQIP each year over the last five years, going from $1.85 billion of budget authority in FY22 to $2.025 billion in FY23. This difference between obligations and budget authority combined with the step up in annual funding creates the large jump in funding from FY22 to FY23 shown in Graph 2.

The post Correcting the Record: The IRA Made More Money Available for All Conservation Work appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

On August 31, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) announced the availability of $65 million for the Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program. This funding is split into two separate opportunities: $50 million for CIG On Farm Trials and $15 million for CIG Classic. Half of the funding for the On Farm Trials competition was provided through the historic Inflation Reduction Act.

The deadline to apply for fiscal year (FY) 2023 funding for both the Classic CIG and On Farm Trials competitions is October 30, 2023, at 11:59 pm ET.

CIG Classic Basics

Part of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the CIG program is administered by NRCS and provides grant funding for the development, application, and demonstration of innovative conservation technologies and approaches. Through CIG, public and private grantees develop the tools, technologies, and strategies to support pioneering conservation efforts on working lands, as well as develop market-based solutions to resource challenges.

CIG projects are a critical tool in the effort to transfer novel conservation management systems, approaches, and technologies to farmers and ranchers. CIGs also help to share conservation research, findings, and best practices with NRCS (for use in technical manuals and guides,) as well as the private sector.

CIGs bring a wide range of partners to the table to support innovation. State, local, and tribal governments, non-governmental organizations, and individuals are all eligible to apply. Grantees must match 50 percent of the funds provided by the CIG award through non-federal contributions, which can either be in-kind or cash contributions. Grantees are also responsible for providing the necessary technical assistance; NRCS provides technical oversight for the project.

Successful applications must include conservation approaches or projects that directly involve EQIP-eligible farmers or ranchers. For this FY 2023 CIG application period, up to 10 percent of national funds are set aside for projects targeting Historically Underserved (HU) farmers or ranchers. Historically Underserved applicants may also waive the 50 percent non-federal match requirement.

The Classic CIG program has two components – national and state. This latest announcement is for the national component. It is up to each state office to choose to administer its own CIG competition in FY 2023, using a portion of its state EQIP funds. Most states have not yet announced funding availability for this year.

FY 2023 CIG Classic Priorities

Each year, NRCS identifies priority categories within CIG that can advance new or emerging high priority natural resource issues. This year’s announcement for Classic CIG included three priority areas: climate-smart agriculture with two subcategories; Combating Invasive Species; Conservation in Urban Agriculture Systems. Further details on each and subcategory descriptions are below.

• Forestry: Forests play a significant role in reducing carbon dioxide through carbon sequestration. Forests store carbon in trees, shrubs, and soil. Forest management and tree planting, included as part of an agroforestry system, support tree growth and increase carbon storage. This priority area will accept proposals for climate smart forestry and agroforestry in one of the following two areas: agroforestry and climate resilience.
• Habitat Conservation and Restoration for Wildlife and Invertebrates: This priority is focused on innovations to identify, improve, and expand habitats for wildlife and native beneficial invertebrate populations critical for ecosystems, agriculture, or other natural resource services. Native insect and invertebrate populations are plummeting with more than one million species under threat of extinction in the coming decades. This decline impacts entire ecosystems as well as producers who depend on crop pollination. Higher priority will be given to projects that have a large impact on invertebrate conservation or can leverage other resource opportunities that have stackable conservation benefits.
• Managing Agricultural Lands to Improve Local Water Quality:  Traditional agricultural land management might not consider risks to receiving water bodies. Current agricultural nutrient management decisions are often based on field production goals and recommendations from universities, crop consultants, and agrichemical dealers. However, the impacts of field loss of nutrients on the receiving aquatic systems can vary greatly among different watersheds or groundwater recharge areas. Farm management of water and nutrients on a field-by-field bases, without attention to how nutrient loss affects the local receiving waterbody, creates a disconnect that could in some circumstances result in a negative outcome for local water resources (i.e., the receiving water body or groundwater recharge area). NRCS prioritizes projects that result in a system of conservation and management practices at the field level that (1) demonstrate water quality improvement or protections at the local water resource level and (2) evaluate agricultural economic and production impacts and benefits to individual producers.
• Energy Conservation: Agricultural producers typically rely on a range of energy sources. They use energy directly (e.g., electricity or propane) and indirectly (e.g., fertilizer or feed). Most producers can increase the energy efficiency of their equipment, systems, and management strategies. Many producers can capture or convert onsite renewable resources to meet some portion of their energy needs. Few producers have a clear path to evaluate their operation, develop a priority sequence that mixes energy efficiency and renewable resource improvements, and implement the necessary actions to move towards energy self-sufficiency. A robust analysis for a producer should increase the potential to deliver high resource and economic benefits with reduced life-cycle costs

The full funding announcement is available online through grants.gov and includes the details of each priority listed above.

Awards and Eligibility

Awards for national projects can range between $250,000 and $2 million and they can range from one to three years in duration. State, local, and tribal governments, non-governmental organizations, and individuals are all eligible to apply for CIGs. The 2018 Farm Bill expanded eligibility to allow community colleges carrying out demonstration projects on the college’s land to apply.

All grantees must match 50 percent of the total project funds through non-federal in-kind or cash contributions, excepting Historically Underserved applicants, who may request to reduce their match requirement to one third of the total project budget or to waive the match requirement entirely. To waive the entire match requirement, Historically Underserved applicants must provide a justification in the narrative of their proposal. Ten percent of total available funds will be reserved for Historically Underserved applicants.

Grantees are also responsible for providing the necessary technical assistance; NRCS provides technical oversight for the project. All proposed conservation approaches or technologies of the CIG application must involve EQIP-eligible farmers or ranchers.

How to Apply  

The application deadline for FY 2023 Classic CIG funds is October 30, 2023, 11:59 pm EST. The Agency expects to select applications for funding by January 15, 2024,  and execute awards by May 31, 2024. These dates are estimates and are subject to change. Applications must be submitted through www.grants.gov. Applicants will need to register for a gants.gov account, a System Award Management (SAM) account, and a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) from SAM.gov. 

The UEI is part of larger efforts to streamline federal grant making processes. Previously, applicants had to obtain a Dun and Bradstreet Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number and separately maintain a SAM registration. The UEI is assigned by SAM as part of the registration process and replaces the DUNS number.

Follow these links to do your required registrations, or find this information in the full award package posted to grants.gov.

Learn more about the CIG program through the NRCS website, and via NSAC’s Grassroots Guide.

CIG On-Farm Trials Basics

A subprogram within CIG, On-Farm Trials support the implementation of innovative approaches that have a positive conservation effect, but have not yet been widely adopted by producers. The 2018 Farm Bill mandates $25 million per year for on-farm trials. In addition, the IRA reserved $25 million of its EQIP allocation for CIG On-Farm Trials each year, with special instructions to fund feed management projects. Together, 2018 Farm Bill funding and IRA allocations account for the $50 million available in this competition.

On-Farm Trial grants are available for non-governmental organizations with experience working with farmers and ranchers, private entities whose primary business is related to agriculture, and non-federal government agencies. On-Farm Trials projects may be between three and five years in duration with awards ranging from $250,000 to $5,000,000.

Typically, successful applicants must provide a 25 percent match to federal funds awarded. For this competition, there is no cost sharing or matching requirement and there is no competitive advantage to applicants who voluntarily provide a match. NSAC applauds this long overdue change, as match requirements often function as a barrier to participation for historically underserved communities and smaller organizations doing truly innovative work to advance diversification on the landscape. Further, at least 10% of available funding will be awarded to Historically Underserved applicants.

FY23 CIG On-Farm Trial Priorities

Each year, NRCS identifies priority topics for On-Farm Trials. For 2023, applicants must address one of the four following priorities:

• Feeding Management and Enteric Methane Reduction Livestock: feeding management is critical to conservation of natural resources and climate solutions. In recent years, a tremendous amount of research and field work has elucidated the potential for some of the largest reductions of greenhouse gas emissions through advances in livestock feeding that reduce enteric methane emissions. Building on what is known, on-farm trials seek to fill in knowledge gaps.
• Irrigation Water Management Technologies: NRCS seeks On-Farm Trials proposals to evaluate innovative water management systems that enhance a producer’s ability to monitor irrigation needs effectively, manage irrigation practices efficiently, and increase water savings by using precision technologies. Innovative irrigation systems should focus on balancing producer needs with conservation benefits.
• Nutrient Management: applications that help producers achieve conservation benefits through efficient nutrient management directly addressing site risk for nutrient loss. 
• Grazing Lands: NRCS seeks On-Farm Trials proposals to facilitate adopting new tools, technologies, and strategies that assist with improving and managing grazing lands in the United States at the ranch, farm, or urban interface scale. Innovative livestock grazing management practices used in conjunction with automated tools promote intensive grazing land management systems. These systems meet ecological and economic sustainability goals, such as maintaining and improving grazing lands and wildlife habitat, controlling invasive plants, and reducing large and small animal-predator (primarily carnivores) interactions on rangelands, pasturelands, and urban interface areas. They also optimize producer profitability and minimize risks.
• Soil Health Demonstration Trial: on-farm demonstrations of Soil Health Management Systems (SHMS) and production systems being transitioned to a SHMS. A SHMS is a collection of management practices that focus on increasing soil carbon levels and improving soil health by addressing the soil health management principles of: (1) minimizing disturbance, (2) maximizing soil cover, (3) maximizing biodiversity, and (4) maximizing presence of living roots. These proposals must indicate which of the four soil health management principles the prospective project would address. Applicants are strongly encouraged to address all four principles.

More details on these priorities is available in the full announcement on grants.gov.

Soil Health Demonstration Trials

While a priority for this competition, Soil Health Demonstration Trials are also a durable feature of the CIG program. As part of authorizing On-Farm Trials, the 2018 Farm Bill also created the Soil Health Demonstration Trial (SHD) component, which focuses exclusively on conservation practices and systems that enhance soil health and increase soil carbon.

Participants in the SHD component must use consistent soil health and soil carbon assessment protocols developed by NRCS. Projects are evaluated in terms of soil health, as well as by the economic outcomes generated as a result of the conservation practices. This option supports farmers in their efforts to build soil health, while simultaneously measuring, evaluating, and reporting on the outcomes associated with these projects.

National sub priorities for SHD in include:

• Designing SHMS for high disturbance production systems (e.g., potatoes, onions, sugar beets, and other root crops).
• Developing SHMS that include applying carbon amendments such as compost or biochar with evaluations of the effects on soil carbon and soil health.
• Improving cover crop management in regions with specific challenges (e.g., timing of planting and termination in water-limited regions or pest management in humid regions).
• Integrating greater diversity in production systems, such as managing soil health on grazing land, perennial vegetation in cropping systems, integrated crop-livestock systems, or other diversification.
• Designing SHMS with adapted nutrient management strategies for improved water quality (e.g., systems that address dissolved reactive phosphorus and other phosphorus in the soil in cold climates and nutrient-threatened watersheds).
• Addressing any of the previous sub priorities within the context of climate change adaptation, resilience, or soil carbon stock changes, with special attention toward collecting data to define and quantify outcomes. If climate mitigation is part of a SHD proposal, the methods for estimating entity-scale emissions should follow the USDA report titled Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory.

Trials that compare SHMS to nearby or similar production systems that do not meet SHMS principles (e.g., high disturbance, low diversity, low cover) are highly desired for this round of funding. Applicants must develop production and climate specific SHMS templates that are regionally relevant for projects that successfully implement SHMS.

How to Apply

NRCS is accepting proposals for On-Farm Conservation Innovation Trials through October 30, 2023. Applicants can find the full description of this funding opportunity and apply online through grants.gov. 

NRCS anticipates making selections by January 15, 2024 and expects to execute awards by May 31, 2024. These dates are projected and are subject to change.

The post More Money Out the Door! Farm Bill and IRA Funding Available Through Conservation Innovation Grants appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

RELEASE: The Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act Addresses Competition in Procurement

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) applauds the introduction of this comprehensive bill to support independent, small processing plants and the farmers they serve.

Washington, DC, September 15, 2023 – This Wednesday, Senator John Fetterman, (D-PA), introduced the Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act, S. 2972, (SLMEA). The Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act is a bill designed to support independent small and very small processors by promoting fairness in US Department of Agriculture (USDA) meat procurement  and reinvesting in local meat markets. 

This bill is more necessary than ever, as earlier this year reporting surfaced that the market share of JBS – USA ( a global food and meatpacking company) and other major packers has made it impossible for USDA to consider breaking ties with them. With JBS’ business ethics under question both at home in the US and abroad, taxpayer dollars should not be spent on contracts with such companies when there are more responsible alternatives available.  

“USDA has the opportunity to infuse rural meat economies with hundreds of millions of dollars in new demand that will support local meat processors and independent ranchers,” stated Aaron Johnson, Program Manager,  Challenging Corporate Power Program at Rural Advancement Foundation International, RAFI- USA.

SLMEA would give USDA the tools to reinvest in and strengthen local economies and expand USDA’s options beyond the largest corporate meatpackers as it procures poultry and meat products for a variety of food assistance programs. In so doing, SLMEA also creates opportunities for small and mid-scale, local farmers and ranchers who raise their animals in more sustainable ways by making it more possible for them to participate in federal procurement.

“Taken together, Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act and Strengthening Local Processing Act – introduced earlier this year – provide Congress with the tools it needs to sustain and build on the Administration’s efforts to promote competition in agricultural markets,” said Connor Kippe, NSAC Policy Specialist.

The following organizations endorse the Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act: Rural Advancement Foundation International, National Family Farm Coalition, Campaign for Contract Agriculture Reform, The Center for Good Food Purchasing, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, and National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. 

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Release: Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act Promotes Fairness in Procurement appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

lzaks@sustainableagriculture.net 

Tel. 347.563.6408

Comment: NSAC Welcomes Senate Amendment to Restore Funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production 

Washington, DC, September 13, 2023 – Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) issued the following comment, attributable to Hannah Quigley, NSAC Policy Specialist, in response to Senator Stabenow (D-MI) filing an amendment  to restore $8.5 million in funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production to the Senate’s Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations Bill, which is cosponsored by Senators Brown (D-OH), Blumenthal (D-CT), Booker (D-NJ), Durbin (D-IL), Feinstein (D-CA), Fetterman (D-PA), Gillibrand (D-NY), and Rosen (D-NV). 

“NSAC applauds Senator Stabenow, Senator Heinrich and other champions as they work to restore funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (OUAIP). Earlier this summer, NSAC and 140 other organizations, farms, and food businesses delivered a letter to Congressional Appropriators requesting them to maintain funding for the office to help sustain its impacts across urban, suburban, and rural communities. Since OUAIP received its first appropriation in 2020, it has quickly responded to nationwide interest by investing more than $57 million through 184 grants and 82 cooperative agreements to increase the capacity of urban agriculture, innovative producers, and municipal composting initiatives in local communities across 43 states and Puerto Rico.”

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About the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities. Learn more and get involved at: https://sustainableagriculture.net

The post Comment: NSAC Welcomes Senate Amendment to Restore Funding for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production  appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Last week, the Environmental Working Group held the first Summit on the Future of Farm Subsidies. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) participated alongside Heritage Foundation, Taxpayers for Common Sense, R-Street, Cato Institute, Farm Action Fund, World Wildlife Fund, and more. We emerged with a broad consensus to oppose raising reference prices and to curb wasteful spending in the federal crop insurance program.  

Opposition to reference price increases

The summit occurred just after the publication of new USDA data which reveals that farm income shattered previous records in 2022. Though farm income is projected to fall somewhat next year, income projections continue to outpace expenditures – all but guaranteeing a healthy profit-margin for conventional farm businesses.

Why, then, are some members of Congress calling for increased reference prices? Only farmers who grow covered commodities, such as corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, cotton, and peanuts, are eligible to receive Price Loss Coverage Program (PLC) payments. Those payments are triggered when the national average market value of a commodity falls below a price floor, or “reference price,” that is established in the farm bill. 

Commodity groups argue that reference prices must be increased in the 2023 Farm Bill to reflect the rising costs of production. However, historical trends suggest production costs and commodity prices will peak and stabilize on average over several years. If reference prices were adjusted to these new peak price levels, commodity farmers will be all but guaranteed payments under PLC and even the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program, for which the reference price is embedded in calculations, every year hence. Maintaining current reference prices is in-line with the intent for these programs to serve as a safety net to protect farmers from unforeseen loss, not annual entitlements. 

A new analysis from the Environmental Working Group finds that less than 6,000 farmers will benefit most from increased reference prices, mostly those growing peanuts, rice, and cotton. There are roughly two million farms in the United States. Beltway conversation suggests the proposal to increase references may cost between $10-80 billion in a farm bill negotiation where there is no new spending – which would require members of Congress to redistribute funds presently authorized for the tiny but mighty programs that actually do serve the diversity of American agriculture. 

The groups who attended the Summit on the Future of Farm Subsidies were united in opposition to raising reference prices because it is a very expensive proposal that would help less than 0.3 percent of farms – even as most farmers are still unable to access any safety net programs. 

Curb record-breaking crop insurance subsidies

80 percent of farmers are not enrolled in a crop insurance plan, even as the threat from floods, drought, hurricanes, and other weather events grows. The federal crop insurance program is simply not accessible for small to mid-sized, diversified, and organic farmers, even though many would enroll if it were a feasible option.

Meanwhile, federal crop insurance subsidies to the largest and highest-income farms cost taxpayers a record $19.13 billion in 2022. This shatters the record $11.63 billion that farmers received in 2021, which itself was double the prior decade’s average at roughly $6 billion annually.

A report from the American Enterprise Institute finds that 20 percent of the largest farms receive 80 percent of federal subsidies to purchase crop insurance. The top percentile of farms alone receives 10 percent of total premium subsidies, or an average of $41 per acre. These farms produce an average adjusted gross income (AGI) of $1.5 million and possess an average household wealth of $15.7 million – far above the average household wealth of Americans. 

This begs a question: Why is there bipartisan consensus to subsidize multi-millionaire farmers while the vast majority of farms are left without any protection at all and most Americans struggle?

What should Congress do? 

Congress has an opportunity to invest in the long-term success of American agriculture with the 2023 Farm Bill. Maintaining or even raising crop insurance and commodity program subsidies to the largest, highest-income farms will continue to perpetuate a food system that is unable to sustain itself. 

Members of Congress serious about decreasing safety net costs and promoting systemic resilience should invest in policies and incentives to help farmers reduce risks on-farm through diversification and the adoption of proven conservation and soil health practices. 

In the short-term, that requires curbing record subsidies to the largest, monoculture farmers whose risk is, at present, artificially shifted onto the taxpayer. There is no incentive for highly efficient but irresilient farms to adopt practices that would naturally enhance resilience against natural disasters and combat erosion so long as federal programs all but guarantee an annual profit. 

To this end, the following bills have been introduced or will soon be re-introduced:

• Farm Program Integrity Act – Introduced by Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Brown (D-OH) to close loopholes to payment limitations and means tests in Title I commodity programs, so that only farmers actively engaged in farm management in labor are eligible for subsidies. It also adds a $250,000 cap for any one farm operation annually.

• Assisting Family Farmers Through Insurance Reform Measures (AFFIRM) Act –  The AFFIRM Act was last introduced by Senators Shaheen (D-NH) and Toomey (R-PA, retired) in 2020. Historically, provisions include a cap to crop insurance premium subsidies, an adjusted gross income means test for millionaires, and reducing the subsidized guaranteed profit rate for private insurance companies. The bill is projected to save up to $35 billion over 10 years. 

Additional bills, including the Whole Farm Revenue Protection Program Improvement Act and the Insuring Fairness for Family Farmers Act, would reform the federal crop insurance program to make the safety net more accessible to small to mid-sized, beginning, limited resource, and specialty crop farms. 

For more options to cap federal crop insurance subsidies, refer to NSAC’s Economic Analysis of Payment Caps on Crop Insurance Subsidies. 

Watch a recording of the 2023 Summit on the Future of Farm Subsidies here. 

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