In the vote-a-rama of the last couple of days, the Senate passed these farm bill amendments with roll-call votes (other amendments were passed or rejected by voice votes):

• No. 2439; To limit the amount of premium subsidy provided by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation on behalf of any person or legal entity with an average adjusted gross income in excess of $750,000 with a delayed application of the limitation until completion of a study on the effects of the limitation.
• No. 2438; To establish highly erodible land and wetland conservation compliance requirements for the Federal crop insurance program.
• No. 2363 As Modified; To ensure that extras in film and television who bring personal, common domesticated household pets do not face unnecessary regulations and to prohibit attendance at an animal fighting venture.
• No. 2295; To increase the amounts authorized to be appropriated for the designation of treatment areas.
•  No. 2454; To prohibit assistance to North Korea under title II of the Food for Peace Act unless the President issues a national interest waiver.
•  No. 2293; To limit subsidies for millionaires.
• No. 2382; To require the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation to provide crop insurance for organic crops under similar terms and conditions to crop insurance provided for other crops.
• No. 2309; To require a study into the feasibility of an insurance product that covers food safety recalls. No. 2238; To require more frequent dairy reporting.
• No. 2370; To encourage the purchase of pulse crop products for school meals programs.
• No. 2445; To strengthen rural communities and foster the next generation of farmers and ranchers.
• No. 2167; To provide payment limitations for marketing loan gains and loan deficiency payments.
• No. 2190 As Modified; To require Federal milk marketing order reform.

I won’t go through all of the rejected amendments, but did notice this one:

• No. 2289; To reduce funding for the market access program and to prohibit the use of funds for reality television shows, wine tastings, animal spa products, and cat or dog food.

Now why would the Senate vote to retain market access program funds for such things?   Taxpayer support of promotion of cat and dog food?  How did we miss that one when when my co-author and I were writing Feed Your Pet Right, our analysis of the pet food industry.

And wine tastings, anyone?

But to get to a more important rejection: Senator Gillibrand’s amendment to protect SNAP from budget cuts:

• No. 2156 As Modified; To strike a reduction in the supplemental nutrition assistance program and increase funding for the fresh fruit and vegetable program, with an offset that limits crop insurance reimbursements to providers.

The rejection of this proposal gets us into issues related to the cozy arrangement between anti-hunger advocates and pro-commodity advocates to vote for each other’s funding (translation: logrolling).   Does this rejection mean that the arrangement is breaking down under budget-cutting pressures?  Or does it simply reflect an agreement that a reduction in SNAP is the quid pro quo for removing direct payments and setting some caps on commodity benefits?

Senator Ron Johnson (Rep-Wisconsin) has an interesting take on the logrolling questions.  He filed a motion to send the farm bill back to committee to divide it into two separate bills, one for food assistance and the other for farm supports.

When Congress debates legislation to spend nearly $1 trillion, we need to be honest with the American people about what we’re doing. This isn’t a farm bill. It’s a welfare bill…We should be clear about how much we are spending and why we are spending it – and we ought to give Senators the opportunity for a straight up or down vote on two different proposals that have little in common.

…If Senators want to spend $800 billion on Food Stamps, or nearly $200 billion on farm programs, let them say so with a clean vote – rather than combining them into an all-or-nothing package that passes with a minimum of debate and scrutiny.

Want to take bets on how far his motion gets? [Not far: the Senate rejected the motion this morning, 59 to 40]

The Senate is voting on more amendments today.  More to come.

I’m trying to keep track of the Senate votes on the farm bill amendments, with help from Michael Bulger, Senate Floor Monitor @SenGOP_Floor, @ObamaFoodorama, and the  Senate’s official list online.

The list below comes from Farm Bill Primer, where you can read the details of the amendments.

The heartbreak: the defeat yesterday of Senator Gillibrand’s amendment to restore full funding for SNAP.

Senate Amendments for Vote 6-19-12

• Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii #2440 (highly fractionated tribal lands);  PASSED
• Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii #2396 (tribal relations office); PASSED
• Max Baucus, D-Mont., #2429 (livestock); PASSED
• Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., #2364 (multi-state aquifers); WITHDRAWN
• Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, #2445 (rural development); PASSED
• Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., #2370 (pulse pilot); PASSED
• Robert Casey, D-Pa., #2238 (technical/study -federal milk marketing) PASSED
• Christopher Coons, D-Del., #2426 (poultry insurance study); PASSED
• Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., #2422 (conservation innovation grants); PASSED
• Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Feinstein #2309 (insurance recall); PASSED
• Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., #2156 (SNAP); DEFEATED
• Kay Hagan, D-N.C., #2366 (crop insurance plain language); PASSED
• John Kerry, D-Mass., #2187 (commercial fishermen); PASSED
• Mary Landrieu, D-La., #2321 (rural development loans); PASSED
• Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, #2190 (milk marketing order reform); PASSED
• Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., #2192 (value added grants); DEFEATED
• Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, #2167 (pay cap marketing loans); PASSED
• Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., #2174 (SNAP); DEFEATED
• Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., #2172 (SNAP); DEFEATED
• Rand Paul, R-Ky., #2181 ($250,000 income limit); DEFEATED
• Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., #2191 (wind loans); DEFEATED
• John McCain, R-Ariz., #2199 (catfish); PASSED
• Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., #2217 (organic/AMA); DEFEATED
• Jim DeMint, R-S.C., #2263 (broadband funding); DEFEATED
• Jim DeMint, R-S.C., #2262 (SoS Free MKT); PASSED
• Jim DeMint, R-S.C., #2276 (checkoffs); DEFEATED

For what’s happening today, see the Senate list for June 20.

At some point, I’ll try to make sense of all this.  For the moment, it’s food politics happening in real time.

This is the week to pay close attention to what’s happening with the farm bill.  The senate has agreed to begin voting this afternoon on 73 amendments.*

As the Washington Post puts it, this week’s “vote-o-rama” might actually end up passing a five-year bill that would

cost $969 billion over the next decade and includes $23.6 billion in proposed cuts, making it a slimmed-down version of legislation that historically served as one of the main opportunities for members of Congress to deliver pork-barrel spending to their constituents.

Roll Call explains the politics behind the Senate’s plan.

Although final Senate approval is far from guaranteed, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced a 73-amendment agreement just before 8:30 p.m., hours after Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and ranking member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) could be seen and heard wrangling with rank-and-file Members in the chamber.

The farm bill is the perfect embodiment of stakeholder politics in action.  The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), which has been tracking farm bill events closely, says that

On Thursday, NSAC joined over 90 organizations in a letter supporting passage of the amendment to re-link soil and wetland conservation requirements to crop insurnace premium subsidies, the largest farm subsidy in the new farm bill. Earlier, at the beginning of the week, NSAC also joined over 500 organizations on a letter opposing any farm bill that increased the size of the cuts to farm conservation programs beyond the ten percent cut in the pending Senate bill. A sign-on letter in support of beginning, minority, and veteran farmer amendments will be delivered Monday.

The San Francisco Chronicle points out that California produce growers like the farm bill pretty much as it is.  In 2008, it provided them with some support.  They are opposed to caps on crop insurance subsidies favored by food movement advocates.

The article quotes Kari Hamerschlag, an analyst with the Environmental Working Group:

just 600 farmers in California, or 2 percent, receive 33 percent of the crop insurance subsidies going to the state, an average of $98,000 apiece. Capping the subsidies at $40,000 per farm would save $33 million in California alone…That would be enough…to provide the fresh fruit and vegetable snack program for poor children to 1,178 schools, or quadruple the money for local and regional food programs in the state, or increase a conservation incentive program by half.

As a nation we have to decide, is it more import to subsidize high profits for crop insurance companies, or healthy food for kids?

It looks like we will get the answer to this question from the Senate this week.  Stay tuned.

* Addition:  If you need a scorecard, I just got sent the farm bill primer listing the amendments.

I’ve just been sent GMO Myths and Truths, a review of research on claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified (GM) foods.  The authors are Michael Antoniou, Claire Robinson, and John Fagan, scholars with critical positions on GM foods.

I’ve been writing about GM foods since the mid-1990s, and am impressed by the immutability of positions on the topic.   As I discuss in my book Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety, the pro-GM and anti-GM advocates view the topic in quite different ways that I call for lack of better terms “science-based” versus “value-based.”

In GMO Myths and Truths, the authors attempt to cross this divide by taking a science-based, heavily referenced approach to dealing with claims for the benefits of GM foods.

On the basis of this research, they argue that a large body of scientific and other authoritative evidence demonstrates that most claims for benefits of GM foods are not true. On the contrary, they say, the evidence presented in their report indicates that GM crops:

• Are laboratory-made, using technology that is totally different from natural breeding methods, and pose different risks from non-GM crops
• Can be toxic, allergenic or less nutritious than their natural counterparts
• Are not adequately regulated to ensure safety
• Do not increase yield potential
• Do not reduce pesticide use but increase it
• Create serious problems for farmers, including herbicide-tolerant “superweeds”, compromised soil quality, and increased disease susceptibility in crops
• Have mixed economic effects
• Harm soil quality, disrupt ecosystems, and reduce biodiversity
• Do not offer effective solutions to climate change
• Are as energy-hungry as any other chemically-farmed crops
• Cannot solve the problem of world hunger but distract from its real causes – poverty, lack of access to food and, increasingly, lack of access to land to grow it on.

Whether or not you agree with these conclusions, the authors have put a great deal of time and effort into reviewing the evidence for the claims.  This is the best-researched and most comprehensive review I’ve seen of the criticisms of GM foods.

Can the pro-GM advocates produce something equally well researched, comprehensive, and compelling?  I doubt it but I’d like to see them try.

In the meantime, this report provides plenty of justification for the need to label GM foods.  Consumers have the right to choose.  To do that, we need to know.

Please let’s just label it.

I have a soft spot in my nutritionist’s heart for broccoli. It’s a lovely vegetable when fresh and lightly cooked, and is loaded with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, and all those other good things that nutritionists like me encourage everyone to eat and enjoy.

I expressed some of this fondness for broccoli in a 1997 Commentary in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with this prescient title: “Broccoli sprouts as inducers of carcinogen-detoxifying enzyme systems: Clinical, dietary, and policy implications.”

In it, I quoted President (#41) Bush’s now famous statement:

I do not like broccoli…And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!’

Even in the 1990s, broccoli had policy implications.

And now the New York Times has come up with a lengthy front-page investigative report on how broccoli came to be used by conservatives as a metaphor for the role of government in health care reform.

The story begins with a question asked by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  If the government can require people to buy health insurance, maybe it could force people to buy broccoli: “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later,” he said. “Therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.”

It turns out that broccoli did not spring from the mind of Justice Scalia. The vegetable trail leads backward through conservative media and pundits. Before reaching the Supreme Court, vegetables were cited by a federal judge in Florida with a libertarian streak; in an Internet video financed by libertarian and ultraconservative backers; at a Congressional hearing by a Republican senator; and an op-ed column by David B. Rivkin Jr., a libertarian lawyer whose family emigrated from the former Soviet Union when he was 10.

The Times report is well worth reading, not least as a case study in how conservatives frame issues.  My favorite part is the sidebar on “the broccoli trail.”  Here’s the example from April 2012:

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio program:

“You’re telling me that you want the Supreme Court to decide that the government can tell you that you have to buy health insurance and broccoli?”

In late March, New York Times columnist (and Nobel-prize winning economist) Paul Krugman wrote of “Broccoli and Bad Faith.”

Let’s start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter. That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.

Why? When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don’t make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don’t buy health insurance until they get sick — which is what happens in the absence of a mandate — the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn’t work, and never has.

Maybe the best we can do with all this is to eat our broccoli and hope that it keeps us out of the health care system.

Senators, 31 of them, have introduced 80 amendments to the Senate version of the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012—the farm bill.

Obamafoodorama provides a handy list of the amendments.  The Senate is working through them right now.

Here are a few selections from that list, just to give you a feel for the level of detail involved in this bill.

• Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn: Make co-ops and other entities that get a business and industry direct or guaranteed loan for a wind energy project ineligible for other federal benefits
• Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska: Require the Agricultural Research Service to operate at least one facility in each state
• Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash: Encourage the purchase of pulse crop products for school meals
• Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md: Establish conservation compliance for federal crop insurance
  Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla: Limit crop insurance premium subsidies to farmers with an average adjusted gross income of $750,000. (With Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.)
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.: Strike the reduction in the food stamp program and increase funding for the fresh fruit and vegetable program through cuts to crop insurance
• Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.: Replace the food stamp program with a block grant [The Senate voted yesterday to defeat this one]
• Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: Increase funding for the beginning farmer and rancher program
• Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev:  Prohibit members of Congress from participating in farm programs.
• Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis: Allow the fresh fruit and vegetable program to include dried, canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, as well as fresh
• Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass: Extend eligibility for certain emergency loans to commercial fishermen
• Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.: Require a study on the impact of sugar-sweetened beverages on obesity.
• Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.: Increase criminal penalties for certain knowing and intentional violations relating to food that is misbranded or adulterated
• Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz: Repeal the sugar program [The Senate voted yesterday to defeat this one]
• Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky: Authorize the interstate shipment of unpasteurized milk
• Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.: Promote maple syrup research and production
• Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.: Prohibit the Labor secretary from finalizing a proposed rule related to child labor on farms
• Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa: Eliminate the farmers market and local food promotion program
• Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore: Amend the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana; Establish a federal task force on childhood obesity; Require the Agriculture secretary to carry out pilot projects to improve nutrition under the food stamp program.

Now is the time to let your Senators know where you stand on these issues.  The farm bill still has a long way to go—the House hasn’t taken it up yet—but what the Senate decides will surely be influential.  Get busy!

Update, 4:00 p.m.:  Food Chemical News report that 80 is a gross underestimation of the number of amendments; the number since yesterday has neared or exceeded 300.

Update, 4:15 p.m.: Here’s a link to the Sunlight Foundation’s report on the money behind the farm bill.  About sugar, it says:

Sugar. On Wednesday, big sugar beat back an attempt by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to eliminate a decades-old sugar price support program. The Senate voted 50 to 46 to table her amendment.

Sugar interests such as American Crystal Sugar and Flo-Sun Inc. are among the biggest campaign contributors in the agribusiness sector, giving to Democrats and Republicans alike.

The sugar industry gains strength from having two geographic strongholds–the South, where sugar cane is grown, and the mid-west, the source of sugar beets.

However, sugar’s opponents, the interests that buy sugar for their products, is also quite formidable. The Coalition for Sugar Reform, which supported the Shaheen amendment, include such heavyweights as the American Beverage Association, the Food Marketing Institute, and the Snack Food Association, which in turn have powerful corporate membership.

While Congress is fussing over the farm bill, Michele Simon’s new report, Food Stamps: Follow the Money, identifies the businesses that most stand to gain from the $72 billion spent last year on SNAP.  This program, formerly known as food stamps, gave 46 million Americans an average of  $134 per month to spend on food in late 2011.

Just as health and anti-obesity advocates are working to bring agricultural policy in line with health policy by getting the farm bill to promote production of healthier foods, they also are looking at ways to encourage SNAP recipients to make healthier food choices.  At present, SNAP recipients have few restrictions on what they can buy with their benefit cards.

In contrast, participants in the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC), which is not a farm bill program, can only use their benefits to buy foods of high nutritional value.  The idea of requiring SNAP recipients to do the same has split the advocacy community.

Anti-hunger advocates fear that any move to restrict benefits to healthier foods, or even to evaluate the current food choices of SNAP recipients, will make the program vulnerable to attacks and budget cuts.  They strongly oppose such suggestions.

Follow the Money explains some of the politics behind efforts to maintain the status quo:

• Food industry groups such as the American Beverage Association and the Snack Food Association teamed up with anti-hunger groups to oppose health-oriented improvements to SNAP.
• Companies such as Cargill, PepsiCo, and Kroger lobbied Congress on SNAP, while also donating money to America’s top anti- hunger organizations.
• At least 9 states have proposed bills  to make health-oriented improvements to SNAP, but  none have passed, in part  due to opposition from the food industry.
• Coca-Cola, the Corn Refiners of America, and Kraft Foods  all lobbied against a Florida bill that aimed  to disallow SNAP purchases for soda and junk food.
• Nine Walmart Supercenters in Massachusetts received more than $33 million in SNAP dollars in one year.
• Walmart received about half of the billion dollars in SNAP expenditures in Oklahoma over a 2-year period.
• J.P. Morgan Chase holds contracts in 24 states to administer SNAP benefits.
• Banks and other private contractors are reaping significant windfalls from the economic downturn and increasing SNAP participation.

The point here is that banks that administer SNAP have a vested interest in keeping SNAP enrollments high and makers of junk foods have a vested interest in making sure that there are no restrictions on use of benefits.

Another point: data on use of SNAP benefits exist but are either proprietary or not made available.

The report concludes with these recommendations:

• Congress should maintain SNAP funding in this time of need for millions of Americans;
• Congress should require collection and disclosure of SNAP product purchase data, retailer redemptions, and national data on bank fees;
• USDA should evaluate state EBT contracts to determine if banks are taking undue advantage of taxpayer funds.

I’ve not seen this kind of analysis before and this report deserves attention.  At the very least I hope that it will encourage Congress to make sure that the poor get their fair share of SNAP benefits.

The controversy continues over Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to limit the size of sodas to 16 ounces in certain places.

On the one hand, we have today’s account in the New York Times of Mayor Bloomberg’s visit to Montefiore in the Bronx, where obesity levels appear intractable:

Critics have described [Mayor Bloomberg’s] proposed soda rule as interfering with a matter of personal choice, calling instead for less intrusive means to address the obesity problem, through education and access to healthy foods. But the Bronx experience helps explain why Mr. Bloomberg and city health officials embraced the aggressive new regulatory tact after years of trying, and failing, to curb obesity through those types of measures.

…In defending his proposal, Mr. Bloomberg said at Montefiore that the ban was not intended to tread on anyone’s rights, and he noted that more than individual liberties were at stake. “We are absolutely committed to doing everything in our power to help you get on track and stay on track to maintain a healthy lifestyle,” he said. “Because this isn’t your crisis alone — it is a crisis for our city and our entire country.”

On the other hand, here’s the June 18 New Yorker–“soda noir.” 

The New York City Board of Health is meeting today to review the Mayor’s soda proposal.  Stay tuned!