"And On His Farm He Had a Fuel Cell, E-i-ei-o..."

In the wake of the IPCC report, you may have missed out on this proposal, which bears integrally on our economy, our environment and our health.

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The 2002 Farm Bill is up for renewal. On Wednesday, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns introduced a new Farm Bill that, while not as revolutionary as some had hoped, takes steps to mitigate some of the uglier faces of large-scale agribusiness.

The new bill eliminates subsidies for farmers who earn more than $200 thousand per year (down from $2.5 million), and aims to democratize the current subsidy system which tends to over-compensate highly productive farmers and under-compensate farmers who experience crop loss.

Other reforms include an additional $7.8 billion in funding reserved for conservation programs, $4.2 billion for water quality enhancement, and $1.6 billion for renweable energy research and grants. Additionally, the new bill reserves $3.2 billion for purchasing more fruits and vegetables to improve nutrition assistance programs.

A summary of the 2007 Farm Bill is available here.

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Nice. Very nice. But nothing short of reversing the 1973 Farm Bill, written by Earl Butz (working for President Nixon), will really do the trick.