Think about the federal farm bill tonight at dinner.
If you know the local farmer or rancher who provided your meal, you also know it’s fresh, free of contamination, nutritious and it didn’t contribute many greenhouse gases in transport. You know that the farm workers were treated fairly. You know that everyone in your community can find and afford this healthy local food, and that the money you spent went to local producers and is now multiplying in your local economy.
If so, you are part of a healthy local food system.
Major reforms in our nation’s agricultural policies, as well as our society’s attitudes, are necessary to make this a more common picture. Setting those policies on the federal level for the next several years is the role of the farm bill currently being debated in Congress. So far, some very significant reforms have been embraced and hopefully they will remain in the bill to its passage. Yet, there are several major reforms that most likely won’t be included this time around.
Fortunately, there is a very small federal program that can make a big difference, despite this lack of major reform. The USDA Community Food Projects Competitive Grants program has been empowering communities to boost healthy eating and rebuild local food systems for the last 10 years. With only $5 million a year (a minuscule part of the multibillion-dollar USDA budget), this program has offered hope for reform from the grassroots. Community groups in Boulder, Denver and in Southwest Colorado have benefited from this program.
Here in Southwest Colorado, a Community Food Project grant funded a “community food assessment.” This grant allowed several local nonprofits to engage hundreds of individuals, including farmers, children, restaurateurs, retailers, nutritionists, politicians, school administrators and others in a conversation about how the local food system could be rebuilt. Farmers and ranchers are now often outnumbered by their supporters around meeting tables. This has laid the foundation for a wide variety of improvements on the local level.
Unfortunately, the Community Food Projects program has never been funded even close to its full authorization. The House version of the farm bill currently has no mandatory funding for it at all. Without full funding, the program will never reach all the communities that need it.
The small allocation needed to fully fund the Community Food Projects program is a sound investment. Most of these projects can be funded only once, so they must show how the grant will bring about lasting improvements in a local community without coming back to USDA for continual support. This is in sharp contrast to the conventional subsidies that shore up an ailing system on a continuing basis without even addressing the root problems.
Community Food Projects enable local community groups to reform agricultural and food policy from the grassroots and to help change those societal attitudes about food and farming which must accompany, and to some extent precede, meaningful reform on a national scale.
I encourage readers to contact our two U.S. senators — especially Ken Salazar, who has a role on the Senate Agriculture Committee — to push for mandatory funding for the Community Food Projects program. Communities in Colorado and our nation as a whole deserve no less.
Jim Dyer raises sheep with his wife, Pam, south of Durango and coordinates the Southwest Colorado Farm to School project and the Southwest Marketing Network
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