As you may have seen in the news, the House of Representatives passed their version of the Farm Bill on Friday afternoon.  And Food & Water Watch activists made a difference!  On several key issues, bad amendments were either withdrawn or defeated.

Here’s the wrap-up:

Factory Farms – An amendment to lift the cap on payments to large farms from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program was defeated on the floor of the House.  EQIP is a conservation program that gives grants to farms to improve their environmental practices.  Removing the cap on farm size would allow large factory farms to receive grants to build systems for managing the vast amounts of manure their operations generate.  The defeat of this amendment was good news for those trying to make factory farms pay to clean up the pollution they create.

Country of Origin Labeling – After lots of behind-the-scenes drama to head off a threatened amendment to gut the program, the House version of the bill clarifies how country-of-origin labeling will be instituted for meat and produce.  And it keeps the process on track so labeling will be required in September 2008. In light of the furious opposition by the meat, produce, and grocery industries, this is a major victory for consumers who took action to say they want COOL now.

Organic Production –  The House version of the bill includes funding to help farmers transition to organic production and also more support for research into organic production methods.

While we made good progress on these fronts, the Farm Bill is a much bigger package of policies.  One of the cornerstones of the Farm Bill is policy on commodity crops like corn, soybeans, cotton, and rice.  The House version of the Farm Bill leaves in place a broken system for these commodity crops.  The House missed an opportunity to re-instate supply management programs that would stop the overproduction of these crops that leads to low prices for farmers and cheap feed for factory farms.  Instead, they tinkered around the edges of bad policies that have been in place since 1996.

But even these little victories are farm from guaranteed.  The Senate must write and pass a bill and then the two must be reconciled in a conference committee.  Stay tuned for more. 

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