Advocacy and Policy

Yes, we are still working on a Farm Bill.

The Farm Bill includes policies affecting agriculture and so much more. Nutrition programs in the Farm Bill feed 41 million people in this country. Nature-based solutions to climate change must start with more sustainable farming and soil health practices on the 52% of American land that is used for agriculture.

The Farm Bill remains in limbo and funding for nutrition and conservation programs are in doubt. Budget cutting is in fashion, and these two parts of the Farm Bill are likely to get cut.

That’s why the seven NOFA state chapters and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardners Association are mobilizing our membership to demand full funding for nutrition and conservation programs in the next Farm Bill. We have launched a new petition for you to sign online and at the winter conferences to keep the pressure on for as long as it takes to get a new bill. You can sign that petition, here.

We are calling on Congress to pass a farm bill that maintains the $20 Billion Inflation Reduction Act funding for conservation programming. The four main conservation programs funded by the IRA support climate-smart organic practices such as cover cropping and conservation crop rotation, practices that build soil health and increase crop yields. The results amount to a triple win: farms reduce greenhouse gas emissions while removing carbon from the atmosphere,  increasing yields and thus the bottom line. These voluntary programs have been vastly underfunded and thousands of farmers have applied and been rejected for lack of funding in the past.