02/08/05 Budget and ag; The conditions

02/08/05 Budget and ag; The conditions

President Bush's proposed $2.57 billion dollar budget for fiscal year 2006 includes major reductions in agriculture subsidies. According to the budget, ag programs would see an almost ten per cent cut next year, about a savings of over $8 billion dollars in the federal budget. But according to news reports, if the Bush Administration has its way, farmer subsidies would be reduced $5.7 billion over the next decade. Other proposed cuts include trimming food stamp payments. Agriculture was not the only government budget item trimmed. Of the federal governments twenty-three cabinet level departments and agencies, almost half are proposed to have budget decreases. That includes an almost six per cent budget cut for the Environmental Protection Agency, and decreased monies for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Energy Department. New provisions for the Conservation Reserve Program are being challenged in a lawsuit filed by an environmental group. The National Wildlife Federation sued U.S.D.A. last October, saying the Department's Farm Service Agency has violated C.R.P.'s conservation mandate by allowing haying and grazing on C.R.P. lands at intervals too frequent to sustain healthy habitat for nesting birds. The government has filed a motion to dismiss the suit. Those arguments may not be heard until next month at the earliest. If dismissal of the case is not forthcoming, officials say the actual case could be heard some time this summer or fall. Now with today's "Food Forethought", here's Susan Allen. ALLEN: My defining moment with Food Forethought, (my ah ha) , when the written columns, , the radio commentary and hours promoting the FFT became personal occurred when I saw a letter I saw in a newspaper, written in response to one of my monthly columns. A farmer who sells direct at a roadside stand in California wrote to thank me for valuing his agricultural contributions. He wrote how much it pained him when organic- only proponents pulled off at his stand and put him down for his conventional farming methods, saying among other things that he was poisoning their children. He didn't understand why there needed to be such a dark line in the sand between organic and conventional and he posed the question that even if it was proven that organic was healthier ( and it hasn't been) could we then make the conclusion that non-organic farmers are bad? His letter made it crystal clear that FFT exists to give a validation to the ability of all American farmers to produce high quality food irregardless of whether they sell their produce at a farmers market or in a bulk shipping container earmarked for a third world country. I'm Susan Allen that's FFT.
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