On Wednesday the Senate Agriculture Committee will mark up Senator Lincoln’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the proposed legislation to reauthorize child nutrition programs including school meals and the Women, Infants and Children’s (WIC) nutrition program. The bill includes new national nutritional standards to be applied to all foods sold in school, including food […]
Local & Regional Food Systems
Lincoln Introduces Child Nutrition Bill for Markup
This morning, Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) unveiled her “markup vehicle” for Child Nutrition Act reauthorization and scheduled Committee markup of her draft bill for next Wednesday, March 24. The proposal is titled “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.” Farm to School would receive just $25 million in the current Lincoln draft. However, […]
Farm to School Bill Introduced in Senate
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) today introduced the Growing Farm to School Programs Act (S. 3123), a popular proposal to authorize $50 million to USDA to provide start-up funds to communities across the country linking farmers and ranchers to the school lunch program. Senator Leahy’s bill is designed to improve the quality of school lunches while […]
Vilsack and Merrigan At Senate Agricultural Appropriations Hearing
Appropriations season is in full swing in Washington, and appropriators are deciding which programs to fund and which to cut. Hearings on funding levels for 2011 are occurring almost daily, as the House and Senate Appropriations Committees begin the annual process that generally results in markups in late spring, floor votes in the summer, and […]
The Atlantic Forum Tackles Food Safety
Has the FDA’s experiment with self-policing failed? This was the question posed by Marc Ambinder, Politics Editor at The Atlantic, at the Food Summit hosted by The Atlantic Monthly on March 4. Ambinder noted that until the spinach, pet food, and baby formula scares in 2006, 2007, and 2008, funding for the FDA during the […]
Farmers Market Grant Opportunity Announced
USDA published a notice of $5 million in grant funds available through the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) in today’s March 1 edition of the Federal Register. NSAC and the Wallace Center developed this program and NSAC championed it in the 2002 Farm Bill. FMPP grants vary in size from $2,500 to $100,000 and do […]
New Farm to School Bill in House
On Friday, February 26, Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced the Farm to School Improvements Act of 2010 (HR 4710), which would provide the USDA with $10 million a year for a competitive grants program to fund projects linking producers with the school lunch program. The proposed legislation’s goal is to improve nutrition in schools while […]
Grant Opportunity: Community Outreach and Assistance for Risk Management
Today’s federal register announced the availability of $2.5 million in grants for the Risk Management Agency’s (RMA) Community Outreach and Assistance Partnership Program and $1.1 million for Commodity Partnerships for Small Agricultural Risk Management Education Sessions. The Community Outreach and Assistance Partnership Program targets limited resource, socially disadvantaged and other traditionally underserved producers with training, […]
House Ag Appropriation Hearings kick off with questions for Vilsack
Yesterday’s hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture kicked off the annual ag appropriations cycle with a round of questions for Secretary Vilsack on the USDA’s budget proposals for 2011. Members covered a wide swath of issues, and specifically addressed a number of programs of interest to NSAC members, including the Biomass Crop Assistance […]
Delayed, not diminished: Vilsack on Child Nutrition priorities, including Farm to School
After being postponed for two weeks by the blizzard that shut down the capitol, USDA Secretary Vilsack outlined the Administration’s priorities for the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization yesterday at a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The Child Nutrition Act includes authorization for the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs, summer food, […]
Policy Considerations in Revitalizing Local and Regional Food Systems
Last week, Ferd Hoefner, NSAC’s Policy Director, addressed an audience at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum 2010 with an assessment of the policy opportunities and barriers to strengthening local and regional food systems. The USDA’s increasing focus on connecting farmers with local and regional markets for their products is evident in cross-cutting initiatives like Know […]
Peterson and Vilsack endorse local and regional food at Home Grown
More than 200 people braved chilling western Minnesota February weather on Monday and Tuesday to hear House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Collin Peterson and USDA Secretary Vilsack speak about the need to develop better local food systems at the Home Grown Economy conference at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall. At least another 100 participants […]
A Sustainable Outlook?
By Ariane Lotti USDA’s Agricultural Outlook Forum is one of the last places where I would expect to hear Wendell Berry quoted, but that’s exactly how Fedele Bauccio, CEO of Bon Appetit Management Company, ended his presentation on the 2010 forum’s distinguished panel about how the company is addressing topics from the “veil of silence” […]
NSAC’s 2010 Policy Priorities
Each year, the NSAC membership engages in a set of discussions within NSAC’s four policy issue committees and then at our annual face-to-face meeting in January about the coming year’s policy priorities. The NSAC Policy Council, made up of formally represented members, makes the final decision about the slate of issues the coalition will together […]
Farm to School Included In Administration’s Child Nutrition Priorities
Secretary Vilsack’s much anticipated speech at the National Press Club outlining the Administration’s priorities for Child Nutrition Act reauthorization was canceled Monday as the federal government remained snowbound, but excerpts of his comments were made available Tuesday in conjunction with the roll-out of the First Lady’s childhood obesity initiative. Monday’s speech included support for the […]
Let’s Move to Beat Childhood Obesity
First Lady Michelle Obama today unveiled Let’s Move, her comprehensive approach to eliminating childhood obesity in this generation. The morning began with President Obama establishing the Task Force on Childhood Obesity, a group of government agency representatives tasked with implementing an action plan to improve child nutrition and increase physical activity. At noon, Tiki Barber […]
2011 Budget Drilldown: Regional Innovation Initiative
This post is the sixth in a series of commentaries by NSAC staff on the President’s 2011 budget, released on February 1st. Read the overview by Executive Director Aimee Witteman. Look out in the following days for the final budget analyses on conservation and organic programs. USDA’s 2011 Budget request includes a new Regional Innovation […]
2011 Budget Drill Down: Healthy Food Financing Initiative
This post is the fifth in a series of commentaries by NSAC staff on the President’s 2011 budget, released on February 1st. Read the overview by Executive Director Aimee Witteman. Look out in the following days for more budget analysis on organic programs, conservation, rural programs and more. The Administration’s 2011 Budget request includes a […]
Community Food Enterprise gets a boost
By Jess Daniel April Harrington of the Oklahoma Food Coop laughs and throws her hands in the air as she describes her organization’s phenomenal growth since its founding in November 2003. Some of the speakers on the domestic Community Food Enterprise Panel. From left to right: April Harrington of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, Amy Emberling […]
Call your State Dept of Ag to learn about Specialty Crop Block Grants
In 2007, part of Washington State’s block grant went to fund an initiative led by the Organic Seed Alliance to start a producer-led organic seed cooperative in Washington State. Today’s Federal Register included a Notice of Funds Available (NOFA) for Specialty Crop Block Grants (SCBG). These funds go out to state Departments of Agriculture for […]
Obama Budget – Snapshot of Sustainable Agriculture
By Aimee Witteman Today, President Obama unveiled his $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2011. The big fat volumes with all of the program line items for each department of government were published online at the U.S. Government Printing Office this morning. This post summarizes just a few of the proposed losses and gains for […]
The Incredible Shrinking Local Market
By Annette Higby The Growing Safe Food Act would support small local growers by providing training and technical assistance on food safety standards. Call your senator today and suggest that he or she co-sponsors the bill. While we all cheer this Administration’s emerging emphasis on local and regional food production, let’s not forget that the […]
“Where the Future is Planted”
By Ariane Lotti, NSAC Credit: California Farmlink — Rebecca King is a beginning farmer in northern California. She owns and operates Monkey Flower Ranch When USDA Deputy Secretary Merrigan addressed the crowd at the Ecological Farming Association’s 30th Anniversary EcoFarm Conference last week, she was talking to a crowd of seasoned organic pioneers as well […]
Dr. Elisabeth Hagen to be appointed Food Safety Under Secretary: on the to-do list, meat label claims
By Ferd Hoefner, NSAC It has taken more than a year, but USDA finally has a proposed presidential appointment to the position of Under Secretary for Food Safety (see USDA press release below). After all that time, with many prominent names from the outside floated over the last 12 months, the Administration has settled on […]