May/June 2023 - 4

EDITOR'S LETTER
Will the 2023 Farm Bill
be known as the 'climate
change Farm Bill?'
I
ts official title is The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, but many
headlines about the most recent farm bill focused on its legalization of
the production of hemp.
In just a few years, hemp as a
commodity has been normalized, even if
it's not a stable market at this point.
Will the 2023 Farm Bill do the same
for federal programs addressing
climate change?
As Congress nears the Sept. 30
deadline for the new farm bill, we'll be
hearing more about climate change
and the legislation's role in addressing
it - and why it has no place in the
legislation.
Regardless of the arguments for
or against, the fact there's a debate
at all shows the influence different
administrations can have on farm bills.
Five years ago, The Agriculture Improvement Act mentioned the word
" climate " just seven times throughout its 530 pages. As a contrast, the
36-page Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance's (SCFBA) recommendations
released in January has 49 references to " climate. " The SCFBA, which
has members from throughout the country representing a variety of
specialty crops, has five principles guiding its recommendation process,
with " Natural Resource and Climate " representing most of those climate
change recommendations.
" Climate change is here, and affects the economic sustainability
of farming, just as the Dust Bowl did in the thirties, " according to the
SCFBA's recommendations.
During a recent interview on National Public Radio's Morning
Edition, journalist Ximena Bustillo explained that although Republicans
historically have resisted efforts to address climate change, many of
them represent rural areas where farmers and ranchers have been
devastated by " climate disasters " in recent years.
" It definitely changed in terms of what individual offices are willing
to talk about, but there are also some very strong political lines that
get drawn around what solutions ought to look like, " Cathy Day, climate
policy coordinator at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition,
said in the interview, " and so that continues to make it an often-complex
conversation. "
It will be interesting to see how that complex conversation will
influence legislators' decisions on whether conservation programs will
be funded in the name of climate change.
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MAY/JUNE 2023 | VOLUME 57 | ISSUE 5
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