The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future

What Does the 2007 U.S. [Food and] Farm Bill Have to Do with Public Health?

The omnibus Farm Bill, due for renewal in 2007, is major legislation affecting U.S. food and agriculture systems. Despite its rustic-sounding name, the farm bill has powerful impacts on food availability and access, the economy, and the environment nationwide and internationally. Policies in recent Farm Bills have harmed public health, nutrition, the environment, and social equity. This year, public health advocates are joining with others to speak up for a Farm Bill serving broader social values. We intend for this document to stimulate discussion, interest and activity in the public health and policy communities.  

Original article:  http://www.jhsph.edu/clf/PDF%20Files/Farmbill.pdf

11 Ways the Farm Bill Impacts Public Health

1. Promoting Unhealthy Foods:  There is a disconnect between the foods the US government promotes through its “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” and those it supports through agricultural policy. Our policies contribute to overproduction of corn and soy [see box] and thus to food processors using high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil in most processed foods.  These policies help make sweets and fats convenient and affordable and may contribute to obesity. Not enough policy tools support fruit and vegetable production and distribution.
Public Health Recommendations: Shift U.S. investment emphasis from unhealthy to healthy foods, including: strengthening incentives and infrastructure to encourage more fruit/vegetable production; supporting better access to fresh foods; and funding programs to promote healthy food.

2. Inadequate Food Safety Net, Lack of Access to Healthy Food:   Federal nutrition programs authorized in the Farm Bill (such as Food Stamps) do not reach all who are food-insecure and/or hungry, provide far too little assistance, and often do not provide adequate or optimal nutrition. 
Public Health Recommendations: Improve nutrition program access and outreach. Increase benefits and provide incentives and education to increase access to and interest in healthy food, particularly fruits and vegetables.

3. Environmental Contamination: Current farm policy encourages intensive farming methods that can erode soil quality, increase dependence on chemical fertilizers, and increase pest numbers and thus the need for pesticides. Manure from industrial animal production contaminates water, air and soil, including with pathogens (some antibiotic resistant), antibiotics, and volatile organic compounds. Contamination from both chemicals and manure can affect worker, community and consumer health.
Public Health Recommendations: Promote more sustainable agriculture methods through research, marketing, technical assistance, and farm transition support. Use incentives to: reduce chemical use; promote reducing and cleaning contamination; reduce concentrated food animal production; encourage planting diverse crops; and require responsible waste handling. Restrict funds to projects meeting environmental guidelines reflecting a public health perspective.  

4. Climate Change, Resource Depletion:  Food production, including transportation and land use changes, is a top source of greenhouse gases. The agricultural methods that dominate production today also unsustainably deplete resources including water, soil, and fossil fuels. Climate change and resource depletion pose major challenges to the food system’s ability to feed the population and to human health in the short- and long terms.
Public Health Recommendations: Substantially expand programs to provide infrastructure and support for local food production, processing, distribution and marketing.  Increase support for programs encouraging agricultural methods that reduce resource overuse.   

5. Antibiotic Resistance:  Antibiotics are heavily administered to non-sick animals at sub-therapeutic levels in industrial food animal production to promote growth or to compensate for unhealthy conditions. This U.S. practice contributes to the epidemic of antibiotic resistance threatening humans with infections that are difficult or impossible to treat.
Public Health Recommendations: Provide incentives to eliminate or reduce sub-therapeutic antibiotic use in healthy animals, stop use of important human antibiotics for growth promotion, and support related surveillance and research.
 
6. Undermining Food Sovereignty: The US distributes surplus grains and other foods internationally as food aid or for sale below the cost of production. While this practice reaches some in need, it also contributes to undermining local farmers, economies, and food self-sufficiency. Those economies also become vulnerable to price spikes such as rising corn prices due to ethanol. In conjunction with existing poverty, these economic impacts can have substantial public health impacts.
Public Health Recommendations: Assure that international food aid and other food distribution helps rather than harms local agriculture.

7. Overly Cheap Feed Grains: Most U.S. corn and soy is eaten by animals at corporate-owned food animal production facilities. Public policies keeping feed grain prices below production costs amount to a sizeable benefit for these corporations – one that is not matched for producers of healthier grass-fed meat. To the extent lower prices increase meat and saturated fat consumption, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other public health consequences may be expected. 
Public Health Recommendation: Support policies, including price policies, to reduce the extra benefit to industrial meat producers and to level the playing field between industrial food animal producers and those using environmentally friendlier/healthier practices.   

8. Promoting Conservation-Based Agriculture:   The Farm Bill’s Conservation Security Program (CSP) provides funds and technical assistance to support farm conservation practices which contribute to the sustainability of our ecosystem and food systems, and thus to public health over the long term. Program implementation has been limited.
Public Health Recommendations: Restore program cuts and expand CSP significantly to increase its impact.  

9. Failure to Inform Consumers:  The 2002 farm bill required some country of origin labeling, but implementation has been delayed.
Public Health Recommendations: Require labels indicating country of origin and genetic modification, to increase traceability for food safety and raise consumer trust in labels as guides to informed food purchasing.  

10. Farmer Livelihoods (US and International):  Crop subsidies disproportionately go to large producers. Almost all subsidy payments are “pass-throughs” going immediately from the farmer to fertilizer, seed and equipment producers. Past farm bills have provided some support to US rural development.  International “dumping” of commodities threatens developing world farmer livelihoods. Several countries have challenged the legality of US subsidies under World Trade Organization agreements.
Public Health Recommendations: To promote equity, farm bill support should be targeted to small and medium sized farms. Farm bill funds can help rural communities by enabling small farmers to remain on the land and by supporting infrastructure and economic development.  

11. Food Safety: While food safety was not a significant issue in earlier farm bills, current policy attention is expected to result in its inclusion in the 2007 farm bill. Food borne illness frequently begins with industrial food animal production and related waste management practices, leading to produce and meat contamination, often with drug-resistant organisms.
Public Health Recommendations: Promote research and policy to help change the conditions causing contamination.  Further develop surveillance infrastructure and policy, to support more effective prevention and response.

 Public Health Oversight: An independent review body should monitor the public health and community impacts of US agricultural policies, both domestically and abroad, and should make recommendations for improvement.  

Making Corn and Soy Cheap (Sidebar)

Historically, U.S. agricultural policy involved ensuring fair wages for farmers by stabilizing prices. This was considered necessary given an inherent tendency in crop agriculture to overproduce. More recent farm policy has abandoned the goal of fair, stable prices. Since the 1970s farm policy has promoted high production of commodity crops [grains and other exchangeable crops], particularly corn and soybeans, in ways that have tended to drive market prices below the cost of production. Direct payments to farmers have provided a short-term, though unsustainable, means of keeping farmers on farms. These changes have contributed to overproduction and price instability, thus contributing to all of the public health challenges described in this fact sheet and playing a central role in items 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10.

Public Health Recommendations: Enable farmers to earn fair, stable wages while using sustainable production methods and planting diverse crops – including by expanding subsidies for ‘green’ methods; funding infrastructure, research, technical, and marketing assistance for fruits, vegetables, and sustainably produced products; supporting farm transitions to new methods/crops; enforcing anti-trust laws; re-instating price supports; and disallowing dumping overseas.

Opportunities for Public Health Action

There is great need for public health voices in policy debates. The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future is committed to serving as a resource to help educate public health professionals about the bill and to provide opportunities for policy participation. For more information, contact: Roni Neff, PhD, Research Director This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it