Congress has three choices on the farm bill: Pass, renew, or flake

By Twilight Greenaway

As members of Congress return from their August recess, they have three options when it comes to the farm bill, the multi-billion-dollar bill that shapes everything from food assistance to farm subsidies to farm conservation. They can pass, renew, or flake.

Congress may still pass a new farm bill before the current bill runs out in September, but, frankly, the odds of this happening are awfully low. Though highly flawed, the Senate version of the bill — with its significant but fairly equal cuts to farm subsidies, food stamps, and conservation programs — has begun to look like an impossible dream. And, in the eyes of most sustainable food advocates at least, the version written by the GOP-controlled House is a straight-up nightmare.

As the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) — the organization whose job it is to track every detail of this now-comically cumbersome process — said in a recent post on its site, the bill could pass if “[it] gets debated and voted on the House floor, the Senate and House versions are melded into one, and the melded version makes it past both chambers before September 30” (read: three short weeks from now) or “the Agriculture Committee leaders conference the Senate version with the House Agriculture Committee-passed bill, and the bill gets attached to a must-pass bill (such as a continuing resolution) in September.”

The second option is to renew the current bill (which has been in effect since 2008) somehow. There was apparently talk that an extension of the bill would have taken place over recess — but it didn’t. And it’s unclear whether it would mean extending the bill for a year, or for a few months, as a way to get through until the “lame duck sessions,” which are coming later this fall.

The third option — “flake” — is probably the most irresponsible on the part of our lawmakers. As NSAC puts it, if Congress fails to act on the farm bill at all, the U.S. Department of Agriculture “would be forced to occupy a multiple-month holding pattern, temporarily stopping many services and programs … programs that need to be renewed and refunded would be left high and dry, including all the major programs for beginning and minority farmers, farmers markets, organic agriculture, renewable energy, and rural economic development.” Government programs that pay farmers to use environmentally friendly practices or put their land aside as a reserve will also now be closed to new applicants.

And, as with most forms of flaking, the longer a decision to do nothing about the farm bill goes on, the worse it will probably be for sustainable food efforts. As NSAC puts it:

Note that should this “do nothing” option happen, then it is likely that Congress would take action to extend or fully reauthorize the bill in the lame-duck session. Doing nothing is very dangerous in September, but monumentally irresponsible in November or December.

Another wrench in the machine is the recent addition of Paul Ryan to the Republican presidential ticket. NSAC says:

Ryan is a leading critic of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, and also has called for cuts to farm programs more than twice as large as those contained in the Senate and House Committee-passed bills.  Lawmakers — especially those associated with the tea party — who share his goal of cutting food stamps and/or farm programs may prefer a delay of the farm bill debate given the possibility that he may be voted Vice President and potentially have a stronger role in shaping the farm bill.

That, folks, is the tangled web that is your country’s farm bill as we enter the second week of September (the big month). Stay tuned.

Twilight is the food editor at Grist. Follow her on twitter.var OB_langJS = 'http://widgets.outbrain.com/lang_en.js'; var OBITm = '1322003100161';var OB_raterMode = 'none';var OB_recMode = 'strip';var OutbrainPermaLink='http://www.grist.org//food/congress-has-three-choices-on-the-farm-bill-pass-renew-or-flake/';if ( typeof(OB_Script)!='undefined' )OutbrainStart(); else { var OB_Script = true; var str = unescape("%3Cscript src=\'http://widgets.outbrain.com/OutbrainRater.js\' type=\'text/javascript\'%3E%3C/script%3E"); document.write(str); }

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Todd Akin Still Running for Congress Following Rape Comments

Todd Akin, Republican congressman from Missouri who’s running for Senate, said in a radio interview on Monday he’s continuing his campaign despite reported pressure from the GOP to step down following controversial comments about rape and pregnancy.

“I’m announcing today that we’re going to stay in,” Akin told Sean Hannity, host of The Sean Hannity Show.

If Akin stays in, he may find himself short on support from his own party. Hannity, a conservative, told Akin that his campaign will be harmful to the Republican Party’s chances to win elections other than his own.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the Senate, will redirect $5 million in advertising funds previously put aside for Akin’s bid, according to a report from the Associated Press.

Talking Points Memo reported that Missouri Republicans and top Republican Party officials are looking to replace Akin before he’s locked-in as the GOP nominee for the election.

SEE ALSO: Congressman’s Remarks About Rape and Pregnancy Rebuked on Twitter

Akin’s initial controversial comments came in a Sunday morning interview with a local television station. The interview quickly sparked an uproar on social media after the clip was published by Talking Points Memo.

“From what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” said Akin in the interview. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

In comments delivered by Akin’s office late Sunday afternoon, the Congressman said he had “misspoke.”

“In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year,” reads Akin’s comments.

Akin also appeared on Mike Huckabee’s radio show earlier on Monday to apologize for and attempt to clarify his comments.

“I’m not a quitter,” said Akin in an interview with Huckabee. “My belief is we’re going to take this thing forward. . .and by the grace of God, win this race.”

Image Credit: House of Representatives

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Ikea won’t tell where it gets its wood — and Congress is about to give it a pass

By Sarah Laskow

Most Americans wouldn’t consider eating a burger made of chopped-up, unidentified meat that could include, say, monkey or mountain lion. But dorm rooms, group houses, and respectable living rooms across the country are furnished with the wood-based equivalent of mystery meat: dirt-cheap dressers, desks, tables, and cabinets made from chopped-up wood of indeterminate, and potentially troubling, origin.

Particleboard might not be as physically off-putting as pink slime, but the source of its contents can be as hard to trace as the source of an E. coli outbreak. And while the materials in an Ikea dresser won’t make consumers physically sick, the purchaser of these products might well feel queasy. Right now, there’s no way of knowing whether or not that chest of drawers or flimsy bookshelf contains wood from old-growth or illegally logged forests — in other words, whether the product is implicated in deforestation, climate change, and drug smuggling.

Congress is about to make it even less likely that Ikea and similar companies will provide that information. In 2008, lawmakers put into place new measures that would have required retailers to disclose the source of wood in their products. Even before the new law was passed, Ikea and other retailers were fighting it, and already, the government has given them a grace period in which they do not have to provide details on the makeup of materials like particleboard. Now, House leaders are pushing through a bill that could let companies like Ikea continue to hide where much of the wood they use comes from.

The Lacey Act, the law that’s at risk, first passed Congress in 1900, when hunters were pushing the passenger pigeon towards extinction and populations of birds sporting desirable plumage were dwindling. One of the country’s oldest conservation laws, the act aimed to limit poaching and the interstate sale of illegally killed wildlife. Over the next century, Congress expanded the law to cover amphibians, mollusks, crustaceans, reptiles, and indigenous plants.

The latest round of amendments — the ones now at issue — targeted illegally logged wood, not just in the United States but abroad as well. Under the law as it stands now, it’s illegal to import plants or plant products that were harvested in violation of foreign laws meant to protect plants and forests. (In the most high-profile enforcement case so far, the federal government raided Gibson Guitar, galvanizing Republicans against the new law.) And anyone importing a plant product — most anything made out of wood counts — has to declare to the border service what type of plants were used to make it and what country they came from.

Compared to companies like Walmart and Target, Ikea has been a leader in responsible sourcing of wood, but even before Congress passed those amendments in 2008, Ikea was fighting to limit their scope. The company’s representatives argued that lawmakers were asking Ikea and companies like it to provide too much information, and that to comply with the law would raise their costs and, therefore, the prices they’d have to charge their customers. “The cost of almost any finished wooden consumer good would skyrocket,” Christopher Smith, an Ikea compliance specialist, warned in comments the company submitted.

In particular, Ikea was worried about sharing information about the wood sources for its products made with “composite materials.” A catchall term for particleboard, fiberboard, and other boards made from sawdust and wood scraps, “composite materials” are one reason so much of Ikea’s furniture is so cheap. (They’re also the reason why even the scrawniest of undergrads can lift a six-and-a-half foot Ikea bookcase with one hand.) In the 2011 financial year [PDF], almost three-fifths of the wood Ikea used went to making “board material,” as opposed to solid wood.

Ikea argues that it’s next to impossible to track where the wood that goes into making these products comes from. If a product had “very ‘neat’ sourcing” — in which each material came from just one contracted supplier, and each sub-supplier had a maximum of one sub-supplier — a relatively simple piece of furniture, like the MALM dresser, might contain 26 different species of wood from 18 countries, Ikea says [PDF].

More likely, though, the sourcing is not neat. According to Ikea, suppliers often source from three to four sub-suppliers. Each sub-supplier might source from a handful of board mills. Each board mill works with multiple sawmills — five or more, in some cases. The sawmills buy their lumber from dozens of logging companies. In the end, a simple piece of furniture could require about 800 different producers.

Because tracking the source of wood through these production chains is so complicated, retailers shouldn’t be required to declare the source of that wood until “it is feasible, practical and effective to gather such information,” Ikea’s Laurie Everill told Congress in May [PDF]. “However, we would like to underline that this should not in any way reduce the responsibility of the importer to exercise due care in procurement,” she said. In other words, keeping track of wood sourcing is hard, but consumers should trust that Ikea and similar companies will make sure the wood comes from the right places.

This argument would be more convincing if illegal logging weren’t so widespread and devilishly hard to root out. Ikea pledged in 1991 [PDF] to use only responsibly grown tropical wood and put in a set of minimum requirements — no illegally harvested wood, no wood from protected forest areas — for its solid wood, veneer, and plywood in 2000.

And yet a Washington Post investigation, published in 2007, called out Ikea specifically for its connections to illegal logging near the China-Russia border. “They never send people to supervise the purchasing … basically they just let us pick what wood we want,” one supplier told the Post. Ikea itself admits [PDF] that “our global sourcing means that we source wood also from regions that are troubled by illegal logging and other unsustainable forestry practices. Our suppliers in these areas struggle with low availability of certified wood volumes and traceability in complex supply chains.”

Even logging practices that fit within Ikea’s requirements can be unsavory. A recent investigation by the environmental group Protect the Forest connected Ikea to logging old-growth forests in Karelia, a region of northwestern Russia where forests have high conservation value — exactly the type of wood Ikea says will not pass even its minimum standards for use. The company’s logging there doesn’t violate Russian law. “But this says more about the lack of strength in the Russian forest legislation than it does on the ambitions of Ikea’s forestry,” says Linda Ellegaard Nordstr?m, a Protect the Forest board member.

Ikea does track the supply chains for its wood products — just internally. Grist asked the company what a “feasible, practical and effective” system to track wood sources for composite materials would look like and how it would differ from the company’s internal tracking system; Ikea chose not to answer those questions.

If the company gets its way, it won’t have to answer questions about the contents of many of its wood products for the foreseeable future. Earlier in June, a House committee passed a bill that would remove reporting requirements for composite materials from the Lacey Act. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has promised a vote on the measure in July. Rumblings of dissatisfaction in the Senate also worry Lacey Act supporters. While we may not be eating mystery meat, there’s a good chance we’ll be eating at tables made of mystery wood for a long time to come.

Sarah Laskow is a reporter based in New York City who covers environment, energy, and sustainability issues, among other things. Follow her on Twitter.

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Congress raises a middle finger to young bicyclists

By Ozzie Zehner

She’s off to school, with helmet on head and doll in tow. (Photo by carfreedays.)

A small federal program is punching holes through the unsafe barricade of freeways, busy roads, and rushed drivers that surround the nation’s schools. Yet despite the program’s success, Congress is now threatening to terminate it — not to save money, but to redirect its funds toward more car-centric infrastructure.

In 2005, Congress initiated a Safe Routes to School (SRTS) national partnership. The SRTS program coordinates infrastructure improvements across the country to make walking and biking to school safer and more practical for students and educators. By most measures, the program has been a resounding success.

Testifying to Congress about a pilot project, director Deb Hubsmith stated, “In only two years, we documented a 64 percent increase in the number of children walking, a 114 percent increase in the number of students biking, a 91 percent increase in the number of students carpooling, and a 39 percent decrease in the number of children arriving by private car carrying only one student.”

Children represent over 12 percent of pedestrian fatalities. And bicycle-related injuries send over a quarter million children to hospitals annually. But SRTS currently receives just 0.2 percent of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s safety budget — and even that tiny slice is now in jeopardy.

The Senate transportation bill, currently in a conference committee, would relegate SRTS funds to a shared pot called “additional activities.” Depending on the compromise bill’s final language, states may be allowed to shift bike and pedestrian funds to road construction or other priorities. House Republicans would prefer to go one step further, eliminating bike and pedestrian funding altogether.

Walking and biking are inconvenient in the United States compared to most other industrialized nations. Most Americans live in a physical, legal, economic, and social terrain designed over a period of many decades to accommodate motor vehicles above all else, making alternative forms of transportation unpleasant and even unsafe.

For instance, a student environmental group at Bridgewater-Raritan High School in New Jersey raised money for a bike rack only to have their principal reject it, citing safety risks. Similarly, a principal at Island Park Elementary School in Mercer Island, Wash., an avid bicycler herself, vetoed a proposed bike route, pointing out that a fifth-grader had recently been killed while walking his bike through a street crossing. A principal in Walker, Mich., recently suspended a group of students for biking en masse to school.

If Europe’s experience is any guide, the success of bikeable neighborhoods will depend on the ability of communities to establish a bicycling culture. Amsterdam and Copenhagen were not always bike-friendly cities, yet today they embrace bicycling and walking as legitimate and esteemed modes of transportation.

A study [PDF] by researchers at Rutgers University and the European Commission identifies six key steps for planners and policy makers trying to design safe and convenient bikeable and walkable communities:

Improve facilities for walking and cyclingPrioritize urban designs sensitive to the needs of non-motoristsIntroduce traffic calming in residential neighborhoodsPlace restrictions on motor vehicle use in citiesDeliver rigorous traffic education to both motorists and non-motoristsStrictly enforce traffic regulations protecting pedestrians and bicyclists

The researchers claim that such strategies are flexible to a wide array of neighborhood layouts, simple to institute, and return rapid paybacks in terms of public safety, quality of life, and energy footprints. Furthermore, prioritizing walking and biking policies reduces long-term infrastructure maintenance costs.

If the United States Congress is serious about cutting costs, it may eventually have to stand up to thirsty car-culture lobbies and back infrastructure that pays durable dividends.

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