KUNC

         

Jun. 18, 2013

What you should know about the food stamps debate

By: 
Payne Roberts
New farm bill legislation will cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. (Beautiful Lily/Flickr)
New farm bill legislation will cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. (Beautiful Lily/Flickr)

The U.S. House is set to take up the farm bill this week, after the Senate passed its version of the bill in early June. Both bills include about $500 billion in spending over five years. Few pieces of legislation can produce such sharp divisions, even by Washington standards—but few could have such immediate, significant impact on so many Americans.

Despite its “farm bill” moniker, the largest portion of the legislation funds SNAP, the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps. SNAP makes up about 80 percent of the bill’s cost. Both the Senate and House have proposed cuts to the program, but lawmakers will have to agree on the size of SNAP cuts in order to pass a full farm bill this summer.

In a special series of joint broadcasts, our partners at KCUR in Kansas City and Iowa Public Radio are focusing on the farm bill. On Tuesday, the broadcast looked at the SNAP program.

Here are some of the key points.

Read more
Jun. 18, 2013

My Farm Roots: A song in her heart

By: 
Bill Wheelhouse
Retired professor Jackie Dougan Jackson lives in Springfield, Ill., but devotes a lot of time reflecting on her childhood growing up on a farm near Beloit, Wisc. (Bill Wheelhouse/Harvest Public Media)
Retired professor Jackie Dougan Jackson lives in Springfield, Ill., but devotes a lot of time reflecting on her childhood growing up on a farm near Beloit, Wisc. (Bill Wheelhouse/Harvest Public Media)

This is the third installment of the 2013 edition of My Farm Roots, Harvest Public Media’s series chronicling Americans’ connection to the land. Click here to explore more My Farm Roots stories and to share your own.

Jackie Dougan Jackson keeps a pretty thorough log of her life. The 85-year-old retired college professor lives in Springfield, Ill., and has lived there for more than 40 years. However, she has devoted a lot of time to her first 22 years, when she lived on a family farm near Beloit, Wisc.

Jackson has written a couple of books of what she calls “creative nonfiction,” which she calls the “Round Barn” series, based on a distinctive feature on the family farmstead.  In those books she relates tales from the farm life of her childhood, from her “grama’s” depression to tall tales told at the dinner table.

“I feel as if I’m a native Turtle Township, (Wisc.,) person,” Jackson said. “I began collecting stories (about the farm) actively in 1967, I have them in handwriting and transcribed.  I’ve been writing about farming in Wisconsin from 1900-1972”.

Read more
Jun. 13, 2013

Tying crop insurance to conservation faces tough road in House

By: 
Amy Mayer
Will the House tie crop insurance to conservation compliance? (jayneandd/Flickr)
Will the House tie crop insurance to conservation compliance? (jayneandd/Flickr)

Now that the Senate has a farm bill (technically the Agriculture, Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2013) ready and waiting for reconciliation with a House version, it’s a good time to look at how some of what the Senate passed may play out in the House—and what it all means for the general public as well as for farmers.

The bill would make crop insurance the biggest federal support program for farmers, replacing direct payments entirely for Midwestern corn and soybean growers. And along with the increased role of crop insurance, the bill includes a tie-in with conservation measures. Historically, going back to the 1985 farm bill, certain federal benefits have required farmers to employ conservation measures on highly erodible land, called cross-compliance. Crop insurance subsidies, though, have not previously carried that obligation. 

“We've got to re-link soil conservation to the availability of crop insurance subsidy,” said Neil Hamilton, director of the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University in Des Moines.

Hamilton said the millions of American taxpayers who fund the farm bill but aren’t direct recipients of its entitlements should appreciate that.

“You’re not on SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps), you're not getting crop insurance,” Hamilton said, “but the issue of whether or not we're spending billions of dollars of public money—and then what that means to how tens of millions of acres of fragile land may be being farmed, or wetlands being drained, or hillsides being allowed to erode—that's something that I think you and all the members of the public have a real significant interest in.”

Read more

Pages