“Will Feds Bankrupt Small Farms With Food Safety Rules?”

This article from the Huffington Post is about the new FDA rules included in the 2013 Farm Bill. Many are protesting the new rules, which were created to help insure food safety and terminate contamination. The protesters believe that small farmers will be forced to abandon their farms in order to oblige to some of the new rules. The “Food Safety Modernization Act” changed the rules on water testing, for example. Farmers fear that this new water regulation makes it near impossible for them to find usable water, because this act declares many water sources contaminated and unfit for agricultural use. Another part of this act tightens the use of natural fertilizers, such as compost and manure, which are two key ingredients to farmer success in terms of sustainable practices. Many also complain that this act makes aggregating farm products, or combining many scrap resources such as fruit excess to make jam, near impossible. Not only do these regulations fail to facilitate a small farmer’s job, but the government also has yet to create training programs to help the producers adequately meet the requirements.

The author of the article projects that small farmers will have to pay 4 to 6 percent out of their gross income to accomodate these new regualtions. If this proves to be an accurate projecture, then many farmers could percievably suffer.

The article also mentions important programs that were excluded from the 2013 Farm Bill, which includes the following: Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP), Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI), Outreach and Assistance to Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers (OASDFR), and Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI).

As someone who has meticulously analyzing the 2013 Farm Bill, I can say that by excluding the above programs, the 2013 Farm Bill is not necessarily damaging farmers. The goal of the 2013 Farm Bill was to mainly prevent overlap in programs, and to efficiently consolidate instead of having an excess of programs to oversee. While I am not arguing that some of the programs taken out are very beneficial for small- scale farmer success, I do see what the government is trying to accomplish. Many of these programs have not disappeared  but are rather consolidated under other titles. In addition, I am excited about new programs that are included that this article failed to mention, such as ARC.

Instead of focusing on the detrimental changes to the Farm Bill, I chose to focus on the positive additions. While I want to be open to understanding how the changes will have a negative impact, I believe it is more productive for me to focus on how farmers can adapt and use their provided resources to still be successful.

Here is the link to the article: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-slama/food-safety-rules_b_4235080.html