STOCKMARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 11 July 2012

[bread_and_roses]

56. Congress wants to cut Food Stamps and $$ to small farmers again

Honest to effing goddess every day it's something. E-mail from "Color of Change" in my mailbox - from their website

http://colorofchange.org/campaign/tell-congress-protect-food-stamps-and-family-farms/

The current version of the Farm Bill ignores the tremendous levels of hunger and unemployment in our communities. Congress is poised to both cut food stamps for nearly half a million recipients and cripple a program that assists Black family farmers — in favor of defending wasteful subsidies designed to line the pockets of Big Agribusiness.

Please join us in calling on Congress to put human health and livelihoods first by fully funding those portions of the Farm Bill that protect critical nutritional assistance programs and secure the continued existence of Black family farms.

(emphasis added)

You can sign a petition here http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/farmbill_house/?source=coc_website

Not that I put any faith in our endless internet petitions - but what else to do? I'll call my Troglodyte R Congresscritter too on this one, but that won't do any good either. Nothing does.

From the longer e-mail that was sent to me:

The largest expenditure in the Farm Bill funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, which helps hungry families buy groceries, provides a market for small farmers, and boosts local economies in some of the most depressed regions of our country. Put plainly, SNAP is key to ensuring food security for millions of Americans who are struggling.

46 million people, or more than one in seven Americans, have signed up for SNAP so far in 2012 — which is in keeping with the percentage of the U.S. workforce experiencing unemployment or underemployment.4 Of that number, 22.5% are Black folks,5 with as many as 9 in 10 Black children receiving food stamps before reaching the age of 20.6 Yet, in spite of the staggering levels of American poverty and hunger these numbers represent, proposals continually roll in to eviscerate SNAP, a vital element of our rapidly-fraying social safety net.

And SNAP isn't just necessary to make sure that no one goes hungry — the program also reliably generates significant economic growth. For every dollar invested in the food stamp program, $1.71 is pumped back into the economy, helping to pay the wages of producers, grocers, truck drivers, and any number of other people who help move our food from farm to table.7 In this way, SNAP is key to the economic stability of some of our poorest states.

Preserving livelihoods for Black family farmers

Protecting access to healthy and affordable food through SNAP is only half the battle. Also on the chopping block is a program dedicated to redressing the generations of disparate land loss experienced by so-called "socially disadvantaged" producers — meaning Black, Latino, Native American, and other minority farmers and ranchers historically discriminated against by the US Department of Agriculture.

For decades, USDA officials systematically denied Black farmers loans and subsidies that they routinely made available to white farmers.8 At best, this state-sponsored discrimination retarded the growth of many Black farms, but in practice it resulted in many simply going under — causing devastating losses of land, income, and intergenerational vocational knowledge. In 1920, Blacks made up about 15 percent of the nation's farmers, but today that number is just one percent.