1. NEWS FROM THE BELTWAY

While consumers, conservationists and family farmers are clamoring for a farm bill that supports good stewardship and better prices the news from Washington is, at best, mixed. The bright spot on the horizon is the upcoming introduction of the Conservation Security Act (CSA). The CSA is a visionary piece of legislation that provides flexible, voluntary conservation incentives for producers. A broad alliance of groups are seeking support for the CSA in addition to fully funding other farm conservation programs like the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) and the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP). Unfortunately, with regards to overhauling farm policy to help restore prices and give family farmers some market control, Congress appears to be out to lunch with "Big Ag." The House, in particular seems intent on moving forward this year on a cobbled-together commodity-based farm bill that looks like more failed business-as-usual. Their mantra is "more trade" and "less taxes." However, most DC analysts maintain there's not likely to be a farm policy reauthorization until 2002. Meanwhile, if you would like to learn more about the Conservation Security Act, go to www.familyfarmer.org

2. THICKER THAN OKLAHOMA CRUDE

A House Agriculture Subcommittee recently held hearings to determine how farmers would be impacted by a repeat of last year's fuel price spikes. At the hearings the National Farmers Union urged investment in renewable power generation that included wind, solar, biomass, methane and thermal. The National Council of Farmer Cooperatives also recommended incentives for production and use of renewable energy. But an alternative energy plan does not seem to be on the Bush agenda. It's a matter of record that the President's budget proposes cutting renewable energy funding by 26% and natural gas research by 37%. Moreover, Vice President Cheney will soon release the White House's energy plan. The policy is expected to emphasize increased coal, nuclear and energy production while de-emphasizing renewables.

Last week Cheney said that conservation is just "a sign of personal virtue" rather than a national goal and that renewable energy sources would threaten "our way of life." This is a telling quote from a man whose ties to big oil are thicker than Oklahoma crude.

3. ESTATE TAX RELIEF: A TALE OF TWO ORGANIZATIONS

The American Farm Bureau Federation's website lists as one of its legislative priorities the elimination of the Estate Tax. The Farm Bureau calls the measure to eliminate the so-called death tax as "the part of President Bush's broad tax cut plan that we especially appreciate," and claims that the tax "destroys" family farms and businesses. Not so, says the National Farmers Union, which last week issued a public statement warning that providing this tax break to the ultra-rich will not help family farmers and will leave "nothing left to provide for good schools, hospitals and economic development in rural America and nothing with which to write a decent farm bill." NFU, which supports raising the exempted estate size to $4 million per person, cites as an example North Dakota, where only one percent of farms and ranches are large enough to exceed in value the $1.3 million exempted under current law. Critics have long held that Farm Bureau leaders utilize the farmer image to advance policies favoring insurance and agribusiness over that of the farmer. To learn more about these criticisms see the section called "Meet the Farm Bureau" at www.familyfarmer.org

4. ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE GENES SPREAD TO SOIL

This week's "New Scientist" magazine reports startling evidence implicating sub-therapeutic antibiotic use in farm animals in the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Researchers at the University of Illinois found genes for tetracycline resistance in the soil and groundwater beneath factory farm waste lagoons. It has long been known that confined animals fed antibiotics as growth promoters develop strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their intestinal tracts.

Antibiotic-fed animals have been linked to outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections such as the 1998 salmonella outbreak in Denmark which was resistant to five different antibiotics. Never before, however, have bacteria containing the genes that convey antibiotic resistance been found at large in the soil and water system. Since different types of bacteria can exchange genes with each other, it may be only a matter of time until the genes for antibiotic resistance are transferred into a communicable pathogen. 

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