Home Grown

The Baltimore Sun

For decades, the specter of the infamously powerful farm lobby has loomed over an ongoing debate about the future of American agriculture.

While the farms that supply the food we eat have grown larger, more efficient and more distant from the consumers they serve, smaller family farms closer to home have found it more difficult to compete and easier to sell their land for residential development and other uses.

Most federal agricultural aid tends to go to the larger producers, while the smaller farms struggle.

But now, a homegrown revolution is brewing, one that unites various factions that have long protested what they say is an uneven distribution of farm subsidies and insufficient support for crop diversity and for environmentally friendly and energy-saving production.

The insurgents are diverse: environmentalists, energy conservationists, food safety and local-food advocates, the health-conscious and small farmers. Many share a desire to improve quality of life through healthier living, cleaner water and more open spaces, and they are pulling together to advance their complementary causes.

This new "healthy farms" alliance hopes to use its collective influence to divert significant amounts of federal farm aid to smaller farms closer to cities, using an array of arguments, including the considerable energy expense of moving food to distant markets, the dangers of infection from food produced in industrial settings, and the environmental and social benefits of preserving open space and limiting suburban sprawl.

Congress is scheduled to review the federal farm aid bill this year, and these advocates of change believe they have the numbers and the momentum to reshape it.

The arguments of the healthy-farming advocates are harmonizing with the goals of others pursuing health and social change. Some see a chance to combat obesity in America, and particularly in children, by strengthening local farm-to-cafeteria programs and coupons for those on fixed or lower incomes. For the environmentalists intent on cleaning up waters polluted by agricultural runoff - such as the nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment spilling into the Chesapeake Bay - there are questions of conserving land and water and preserving open space.

For smaller, family farmers - more the norm in Maryland - there's a question of having the support necessary to be more environmentally friendly, healthier and more accessible to a broader array of local consumers.

"This is a transition time for agriculture to be much more accountable to local people, create economic viability for the farmer, and help restore water quality in the Chesapeake," said Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican who has introduced and co-sponsored a number of bills aimed at changing federal farm policy to these ends. Unlike in 2002, when the farm aid law was last revisited, Gilchrest said, "the issue now is transition to sustainable agriculture, organic agriculture, value-added agriculture, healthy-diet agriculture."

Many share Gilchrest's view. A "broad, loose-knit alliance ... is working together in ways that we've never seen," said Scott Faber, campaign director for Environmental Defense, a New York-based nonprofit that seeks solutions to urgent environmental problems. "For the first time, energy, health, environment, trade, fiscal conservatives ... international development organizations and leaders are all working together to develop farm and food policies that help more farmers, that help meet the health and energy needs of more consumers, that help address hunger, that meet our trade obligations, and that boost world prosperity, and that help the environment."

That coalition is a necessity in the face of an "80-year head start" enjoyed by the relatively few beneficiaries of current farm policies, Faber said. These large-scale farmers have consolidated gains made since the Great Depression and dominate agriculture committees in Congress with heavy lobbying and campaign contributions.

If the insurgent alliance succeeds, federal aid and more friendly marketing rules could make a difference for farmers like Anne Pomykala, whose organic Koinonia Farm in Stevenson can trace its existence back more than 50 years, as the first of its kind in Maryland, Pomykala said.

Last week, Pomykala wove her way through rows of budding basil, pulling up thistles already blocking the smaller leaves from the morning sun. Farm workers Amadeo Leon and Nicolas Montiel picked bunches of chives, snipping off the stems before slipping the remaining leaves into a clear plastic container. The herbs, one of several cooking plants Pomykala grows, were ready for distribution to farm clients, which include stores such as Wegmans, WholeFoods and the Giant supply warehouse in Jessup.

Pomykala, who bought the farm with her husband 20 years ago, said grocery stores once weren't so interested in what they had to offer. But the supermarkets have changed and now they seek to provide healthier, organic foods for their customers.

"It's absolutely something that the public is demanding," Pomykala said.

Local-food advocates say growing numbers of consumers are more interested then ever in where and how the food they consume is produced.

"Self-consciousness and awareness of food is what's beginning to happen," said Joan Gussow, an emeritus professor of nutrition and education at Columbia University who wrote This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader. Gussow has grown her own food for years, and buys nary a vegetable.

It costs more than 400 "fossil-fuel calories" to move a five-calorie strawberry from California to the Northeast, Gussow said, just one example of the high costs that can accompany long-distance food deliveries.

Several pieces of legislation proposed in Congress this spring speak to the coalition's concerns and wishes. In March, Reps. Jim Gerlach, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, and Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, presented the Healthy Farms, Foods and Fuels Act of 2007, which has garnered more than 100 co-sponsors to date in the House, including Gilchrest and two others from Maryland, Democrats Chris Van Hollen and Albert R. Wynn.

"More so than ever before, people are connecting the dots" to see how farm bill policy affects what is produced and consumed, Kind said. For too long, farmers have produced "for the government paycheck ... rather than the marketplace," he added. "That's led to a distortion in what we're producing and how much."

The Healthy Farms bill would increase loan guarantees for renewable energy development on farms and add incentives for environmental improvements; increase access to healthy foods in schools, for the elderly and for low-income individuals; fund restoration of wetlands and protections for farm and ranch land.

"This farm bill could be the great conservation bill of the 21st century and also the healthy-food bill of the 21st century," Kind said.

The organic and nonorganic communities see the value in conservation programs, he said, but about 75 percent of farmers who apply for conservation assistance are turned down for lack of resources.

Doug Siglin, federal affairs director for the Annapolis-based Chesapeake Bay Foundation, made a similar observation regarding cleanup for the watershed region, which includes six states and Washington, D.C.

"There are currently, in federal law, several programs to help farmers with water quality and environmental concerns, but there is far more demand than there is money in those programs," Siglin said. The foundation seeks to restore and protect the bay.

The legislative proposals of Kind and others would promote more equal distribution of governmental support instead of heavily backing a limited number of high-volume crops, such as corn, wheat or rice.

Also proposed in the House are separate bills from Gilchrest and Van Hollen that seek to advance the cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay and bolster conservation funding in this area and elsewhere. There is a parallel effort in the Senate led by Barbara A. Mikulski, another Maryland Democrat. Another farm and nutrition-oriented bill shaped by Gilchrest would direct more federal dollars toward conservation programs, developing renewable energy and creating incentives for farmers to explore the organic food market.

That kind of offer could encourage more people like Dennis Potts, a new organic farmer, who has started growing basil on a portion of the old horse and cattle farm owned by his wife's family in Sparks.

Potts and his wife "very much like to know where our food comes from," he said. But he was recently drawn into trying his hand at producing and selling organic food of his own after visiting the Pomykalas' Koinonia Farm, which will distribute the herbs he plans to plant.

Now in the early stages, "we're trying to diversify," Potts said. Spearmint might be next, he said, and, eventually, hay.

If Gilchrest and fellow legislators have their way, more small operations, like Potts', would emerge and flourish, or established farmers would branch out from traditional grain crops to produce vegetables or launch nurseries, for example.

"The time couldn't be better in regards to agriculture reform," Kind said. "We've got a farm policy here that's better suited for the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era. ... If you were trying to shape a farm bill today for the very first time, it certainly wouldn't look like the current policy that we have."

Faber agreed. While the costs vary from year to year, farm subsidies can soar well into the billions of dollars, Faber said. That's a lot of money that, in his view, goes "to farmers who are the least in need, and which provide no benefit to the public."

More important politically, fewer congressional districts remain purely farm districts, Siglin said. But everyone pays taxes, which, in turn, go to support agricultural policy.

"Everybody acknowledges that the farm bill isn't just for farmers anymore. It's for farmers, but it's also for citizens who don't farm," Siglin said. "The farm bill has to take into consideration the desires of all the people. ... You should be able to benefit with healthier food and healthier water."

Kind said he saw more hope for the Healthy Farms bill's fate, particularly in light of a similar attempt in 2002, which still garnered 200 votes - not far from a majority - on the House floor.

"Even then, there was a strong desire for change," Kind said. Five years later, it's only become stronger and more sophisticated.

"If we don't stand in the way, if we don't make it difficult, it's going to happen," Gilchrest said. By distributing dollars equitably and encouraging flexible and diversified federal farm programs, he added, "that's when the private sector can run with it."

To Faber, it's simply a question of numbers.

This time around, "there simply aren't 218 votes for a farm bill that sends half the money to 22 districts" out of the 435 represented in Congress, Faber said, referring to the agricultural regions that tend to collect most farm spending. "That's not idealism. That's just math."

Yet even as their strength builds, the healthy-farms advocates acknowledge that the road ahead is by no means short - or guaranteed to end at their desired destination.

"There are some very entrenched interests in this town that would love the status quo to continue," Kind said. "Obviously, the challenge is change."

Annie Cheatham, executive director of a Massachusetts organization that supports community farming, said the groundswell of interests can't compare to the "whole offices of lobbyists" for large farm companies such as Minnesota's Cargill and Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland.

But change has come in increments, Siglin said, and this year will be no different.

"The real question is, 'How big is the incremental change going to be?' " Siglin said.

Although the healthy farming coalition could fall short of its goals, Gussow pointed to two issues that she said would probably "loom larger and larger," keeping the need for a significant change in American farming in the spotlight: food safety and energy.

As oil becomes scarcer and energy prices climb, Gussow said, "that will really change a food system where the average food calorie requires 10 ... calories to produce it."

Cheatham expressed a similar sentiment. As "energy costs go up and people begin to be aware of what it costs them to ship foods," she said, those added burdens could keep the need for reforming agricultural policy on people's minds.

Change won't come overnight, Cheatham said. But more citizens are demanding it, and politicians are getting the message.

"Our voices are getting stronger, and it's because we're working closer together," Cheatham said. "I think we are making progress."

arin.gencer@baltsun.com

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