Supporting Farmers and Communities in Farm Bill Debate By U.S. Senator Russ Feingold July 9, 2007 When a nearby farm can provide fresh produce to a school down the road, both our farmers and our schools benefit. In the upcoming Farm Bill, there is an opportunity to give our farmers a chance to grow more of what is served in our school lunch programs. Congress should include provisions in the upcoming Farm Bill that build on the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act and the Department of Defense Fresh Program to ensure that our children have access to healthy food at school, ideally from local sources. At the same time, we also need to remove barriers to local healthy foods such as changing procurement rules that now sometimes prevent local schools from purchasing from neighboring farmers. Congress can also help local farmers provide more food to underserved communities by providing vouchers that can be used at farmers’ markets in parallel to other assistance they may receive from Food Stamps, WIC or the commodity supplemental food program. Providing healthy food to those who can least afford it lifts up Wisconsinites who may have fallen on hard times recently and opens up new opportunities for our farmers. We should also place an increased emphasis on the growth and promotion of local farmers markets in the Senate Farm Bill. Farmers markets in our communities can make the healthiest and most affordable foods more widely available. One of the best things the Farm Bill could do is provide support for farmers markets that would like to have the ability to accept the Electronic Benefit Transfer cards that recipients use, making it easier for recipients to purchase fresh, local goods at a farmers market. Improving farmers’ access to local schools, underserved communities, and farmers markets will take an investment from Congress in an infrastructure that builds lasting partnerships among farmers and the local schools and organizations they serve. Many places in Wisconsin are already working tirelessly to connect farmers and communities, and I commend this valuable effort. The upcoming Farm Bill is the ideal legislation to build upon previous legislation and programs that have only begun to develop this infrastructure and acknowledge the potential to benefit local consumers, farmers and communities. I received broad support from my colleagues in the Senate for my letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture to encourage the inclusion these kinds of provisions in the 2007 Farm Bill. That letter was just a first step to doing more in Congress to help provide the healthiest food to Wisconsinites, and boosting our local farming economies.