As the growing alliance between various civil society groups fighting for better farm policy gathers force, changes are reverberating in Washington DC. With the upcoming five-year congressional reauthorization of farm policy looming in Congress, policy restructuring that occurs now will affect America's food production for five to ten years. Increasingly family farmers, conservationists, religious leaders, sports enthusiasts and consumers are organizing to demand that federal subsidies no longer prop up ecologically destructive and community eroding multinational agribusiness. The constituencies clamoring for safe food, strong families and a wholesome Earth are building a platform for change. Stay tuned and action ready as this battle will heat up in the coming months. 

2. CONSERVATION FUNDING: HI-JACKED BY AGRIBUSINESS?

It's common awareness these days that subsidies to factory farms (CAFO's) are not wanted by taxpayers. Responsible citizens see these operations as environmentally polluting, cruel to animals, crippling to family farmers and potentially fueling germ resistance via massive administration of antibiotics as a growth simulator. Yet, last month, members of the House agriculture committee advanced a proposal that would make hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars available to CAFO's for "managing waste." Family and independent producers are railing against this because it unfairly subsidizes factory farm production costs and fuels the unrestrained concentration and monopolization of markets. Environmentalists see this move as a federal crutch propping up ecologically unsustainable production systems. 

Food production policy in the US is governed by a piece of legislation entitled the "Freedom to Farm" (F2F). This law, passed in 1996, was heralded by agribusiness has the market panacea for ailing farm economy. Five years later, with the poverty, community disruption and social illnesses in rural America mushrooming, politicians are having to admit something is wrong. Central to the so-called free market approach of F2F is the unchallenged belief that massive commodities over production is beneficial and necessary to supply product to growing global markets. 

However, increasing global markets have never actually materialized and now the methodology used in predicting these markets has come under serious scrutiny. In a new study released in May of this year, eminent economist C. Phillip Baumel, points out that the tools and models used to predict increasing export markets are fundamentally flawed. In his executive summary, Baumel states clearly, "A careful review of the assumptions and techniques employed (in forecasting trade export possibilities) shows major limitations as forecasting tools." 

Can you imagine pulling your pig up to the farm emission testing booth to see how much phosphate the little fellow is excreting into the water supply? Well, in the shadowy realm of transgenetic biotechnology, where science meets science fiction, scientists at the University of Guleph in Ontario Canada are laboring to bring home the bacon that doesn't pollute. 

According to the New York Times science section, a few short months after genetically modifying mice to breakdown hard-to-digest phosphates, researchers claim they have done the same thing with pigs, creating at long last a low pollution porker. These scientists say their genetically modified pigs "excreted up to 75 percent less phosphorus than ordinary pigs." As phosphates from manure are one of the dangerous side-effects of factory animal farm production, these scalpel-happy researchers and their funders apparently prefer this approach over the creation of meat production systems that are balanced ecologically, relatively orderless, require no antibiotics and are kind to pigs. 

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