Make healthy food key to farm bill

If you believe the government ought to play an aggressive role in the nation’s economic life, admit it: You’re a liberal. But you’re probably not as liberal as the average Republican member of the House Agriculture Committee.

Thanks to their generosity with your tax dollars, the government has shelled out a quarter of a trillion dollars since 1995 in federal farm subsidies to grain and cotton farmers and landowners. (Go to farm.ewg.org for a list of every recipient and the amount each received.)

Right now, the farm subsidy lobby and its friends on Capitol Hill are on track to write a costly, ill-conceived new chapter to this unhappy history of bankrolling industrial commodity crops. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, we can invest in healthier eating and a cleaner environment. In the bargain, we can help keep 20 million kids from going hungry, give a huge boost to California agriculture, save taxpayers money and support family farmers.

What would a “healthy food” bill look like?

It starts with a moral commitment that no children in this country should go to bed hungry because their families can’t afford to feed them. Today, more than 45 million Americans, half of them children, receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly “food stamps”), which accounts for more than 70 percent of farm bill spending. Are they deserving? If you’re in a household of three and make more than about $24,000 a year, you’re too prosperous to qualify.

Next, by redirecting some of the billions we now are spending on industrial crops such as corn and cotton, we could help make a reality of the government’s public health advice to cover half our mealtime plates with fruits and vegetables every day.

Fewer than 5 percent of adults are doing that now and our consumption of these healthy foods has declined by 9 pounds per person over the past 10 years. The result? Increased risk of four serious illnesses — diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke, with diet-related costs estimated at about $72 billion a year.

Yet, between 2008 and 2010, the farm bill spent $39.4 billion of taxpayer money subsidizing commodity crops, more than eight times what it spent on perennially underfunded programs to support research, promotion and purchasing of fruits and vegetables. These include an array of programs that buy fruit and vegetable snacks for lowincome schools, and invest in research and marketing to help organic, local and sustainable farmers.

Which helps explain why California typically comes up short in the farm bill. We grow too much of the wrong things: fruits and vegetables. Despite being home to 12 percent of the nation’s population and generating 12 percent of its agricultural output, the state receives less than 5 percent of farm bill expenditures. And California receives just 2.5 percent of the conservation funding, which helps farmers prevent water pollution, conserve water and protect wildlife.

What will it take to make the shift from a farm bill to a healthy food bill? Experience tells us that the only thing that really works is when “outsiders” — meaning those among us who happen to eat and pay taxes — get engaged. That’s what happened in 1985, when a small group of environmentalists pressed to shift money from commodity subsidies to conservation. The result? The farm bill conservation programs are now the single most important federal policies dealing with soil erosion, water pollution and wildlife loss — investing more than $5 billion a year.

Now it’s time to make the same kind of push for our health. Here is all it takes: Pick up the phone. Call the politicians who represent you in Washington and tell them you want a healthy food bill, which will be a bill that’s good for California. Call them even if you think they’re already supportive, because that will intensify their commitment.

Can we guarantee your calls will make the difference? No. But we can guarantee that if eaters and taxpayers don’t speak up, we’ll get agribusiness as usual. On April 18, Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee voted to slash $33 billion from the food stamp program while leaving farm subsidies unscathed.

The subsidy lobby is pushing a new $33 billion entitlement program to guarantee the income of profitable farm businesses. That’s on top of $90 billion in subsidies for crop and revenue insurance policies.

And after getting its grip on your money, for the next five years, the subsidy lobby will regretfully inform you that nothing is left to invest in healthier eating, hungry kids or clean water. They’d value nothing more than your silence in response. Ken Cook is president and Kari Hamerschlag is senior food and agriculture analyst at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. Send your feedback to us through our online form at sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1