Valerie Marshall is a law student at Duke University School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. Supporting the wide adoption of perennial agriculture is one of FBLE’s top 2023 Farm Bill recommendations to support climate change adaptation, risk management, and natural resources conservation. But above all, FBLE posits that investing in perennial agriculture would be one of the…
Valerie Marshall is a law student at Duke University School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. In FBLE’s 2023 Farm Viability report, FBLE recommends establishing a system for reducing crop insurance subsidies to farms as their annual gross income increases. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) recently released a report about the effects of placing caps on crop…
The 2023 Farm Bill presents an opportunity for the Biden Administration to address some of the key restrictions on the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) that prevent those most in need of assistance from accessing the program. SNAP represents one of the most successful and essential parts of federal food assistance. USDA research indicates that SNAP reduces food insecurity among…
Though control of the House is still up in the air and Agriculture Committee Member Raphael Warnock is headed to a December runoff, we now have a reasonable idea of what the 2022 midterms will mean for the 2023 farm bill. Regardless of the outcome of Warnock’s runoff, Democrats will retain control of the Senate, and Senate Agriculture Committee Chair…
On a recent Saturday, my co-worker and I spent an unsuccessful five minutes trying to get a Healthy Incentives Program (HIP, a nutrition incentive program in Massachusetts) transaction to go through. We both work at a farmers market selling fruits and vegetables from a farm in upstate Massachusetts. The customer knew that she had $40 in HIP left (the full…
Luca Greco is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Due to racist exclusions at the time of their passage, the many New Deal labor and employment protections that cover nearly every industry have long excluded farmworkers from their essential protections. Given that the agricultural workforce is now predominately comprised…
Naomi Jennings is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. According to USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), “[u]p to 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic, impacting the health of both humans and animals.” Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) placed antimicrobial resistance on…
Samantha Capaldo is a law student at Drake University Law School. She is a guest contributor to this blog. In the last several months, the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee has held listening sessions in different parts of the country to hear from local stakeholders and producers on what programs worked well from the 2018 Farm Bill and changes that…
Jessica Grubesic and Naomi Jennings are law students in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and guest contributors on this blog. To launch its ambitious five-pillar strategy to end hunger and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030, the Biden-Harris Administration held the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in over 50 years on September 28. Below,…
Interest in “regenerative agriculture” is surging as Congress starts thinking about the next farm bill. Native Americans have long cultivated food using techniques that are now widely referred to as regenerative agriculture and are leaders in its resurgence. Unlike organic agriculture, which is regulated from production to labeling by the USDA, there is no standard definition of regenerative agriculture. Rather,…