Food and Faith agribusiness Archives

Posts Tagged: agribusiness

January 13, 2012

Farm Bill Debate Renews!

Posted 2:29pm

Photo credit: Shawn Poynter

Steph Larsen is on staff at the Center for Rural Affairs. Here she is leading a workshop at the National Rural Assembly in St. Paul, MN

“Under current law, if one big corporation farmed the entire country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture would pay 60 percent of its insurance premiums on every acre.”

Sounds crazy, right? Yet this is reality and illustrates the way our food and farm policies give a hand up to the largest farms, while small-scale family farmers are largely neglected. The article below (excerpted) from our partner, Center for Rural Affairs, points to the kinds of changes needed in the 2012 Farm Bill (yes, it should be called the Food and Farm Bill). Read what is important to our neighbors in rural areas of the country.

September 23, 2010

Would you believe it? Corporate lobbying is blocking food reforms

Posted 3:19pm

“…powerful lobby groups were able to delay decisions, sometimes for many years, and “water down” proposed improvements. Their job was made easier because the FAO works by consensus, so persuading as few as two or three national governments to oppose an idea was enough to block it. Then this direct quote — “I have now been 20 years in a multilateral organisation which tries to develop guidance and codes for good agricultural practice, but the real, true issues are not being addressed by the political process because of the influence of lobbyists, of the true powerful entities.” Joyce d’Silva, a director with Compassion in World Farming, confirmed this position adding that it was “horrifying” that — “the narrow interests of certain commercial sectors can have more influence than organisations which represent the values and aspirations of millions of citizens.”