Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill, Bill Imhoff (Watershed Media, 2012)
Every five years, the U.S. Congress passes a little understood legislation called the Farm Bill. It is primarily accountable for setting the budgets and work plans for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the Farm Bill is anything but bureaucratic trivia. Rather, it’s is an essential economic and policy engine that drives the food and farming system.
Just as importantly, it provides nutritional assistance to tens of millions of Americans–many of them children. In recent years, more and more citizens are realizing just how much is at stake in this political chess game. Originally published in 2007, Food Fight was Daniel Imhoff ‘s highly acclaimed primer on the 2008 Farm Bill. Now in a newly updated and expanded edition, Imhoff looks ahead at this all important issue, as the debate for 2012 is already underway.
With the legislation due to be reauthorized in late 2012, Food Fight offers readers a critical resource that can help them deconstruct this challenging bill, organize in their communities to gain a seat at the bargaining table, and ultimately vote with their forks.
Why the Farm Bill Matters
If you pay taxes, care about the nutritional value of school lunches, worry about biodiversity or the loss of farmland and open space, you have a personal stake in the tens of billions of dollars committed annually to agriculture and food policies.
If you’re concerned about escalating federal budget deficits, the fate of family farmers, a food system dominated by corporations and commodities, conditions of immigrant farm workers, the state of the country’s woodlands, or the marginalization of locally raised organic food and grass-fed meat and dairy products, you should pay attention to the Farm Bill.
And get your copy of the new edition of Food Fight here. To be informed is to be armed…