Over the past two years, ACGA has been working to get specific funding for urban agriculture, including community gardening, in the Farm Bill that is being reauthorized at this time. ACGA asks listserv participants to ask your Congressional representatives to co-sponsor the bills just introduced last week by:
Representative Earl Blumenauer's (D-OR) Bill, Local Food and Farm Support Act, HR 2346, and its companion bill, introduced by Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Hilary Clinton (D-NY), Food for a Healthy America Act, S 1432. Call your Representatives and Senator's offices today. The following is a summary of the Blumenauer bill provisions or go to http://blumenauer.house.gov/Issues/Issue.aspx?SubIssueID=177 or Urban Agriculture Production Program: Helps improve food security and enhance urban sustainability by providing grants and technical assistance to promote agriculture in urban areas, particularly food insecure communities. Community Food Project Competitive Grants: Helps increase food security in communities by providing $60.5 million a year in grants to support projects that bring the whole food system together to create systems - including production, processing, transportation, and retail - that improve the self-reliance of community members over their food needs. Value-Added Producer Grants: Helps increase farm revenue by providing $60 million a year for grants to help farmers and ranchers take advantage of marketing opportunities in value-added agriculture. Healthy Food Enterprise Development Program: This new program helps enhance producers' share of the retail product price by providing $5 million a year in grants for feasibility studies and $25 million a year in loans and loan guarantees for infrastructure and equipment to improve farmer access to processing and distribution systems which help deliver local foods to consumers and underserved communities. Direct to Consumer Marketing Assistance Program: Helps to promote new market opportunities for farmers and ranchers by providing $25 million a year in grants to establish and promote farmer's markets and other direct to consumer sales activities. WIC Farmer's Market Nutrition Program: Helps promote good nutrition and increased market opportunities for local farmers by increasing funding up to $75 million a year for this program to provide fresh, unprepared, locally grown fruits and vegetables to low-income women and children. Senior Farmer's Market Nutrition Program: Helps promote good nutrition and increased market opportunities for local farmers by increasing funding up to $75 million a year for this program to provide fresh, unprepared, locally grown fruits and vegetables to low-income senior citizens. Farm to Cafeteria Program: Helps promote child nutrition and increased market opportunities for local farmers by increasing funding for farm to school cafeteria programs, including providing local fruits and vegetables as part of school meals, up to $20 million a year. Local Food Preferences: Helps promote local food production by allowing government agencies, including schools, to use geographic preferences in their bidding and procurement programs and providing start-up grants for to help promote the purchase of local food. School Food Preference Study: Helps promote child nutrition and ensure fair treatment for Oregon farmers by requiring a study of schools' preferences for commodity distribution and a report on ways to increase the distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables for schools. Food Stamp Fruit and Vegetable Incentive Program: This new program helps promote child nutrition and increased market opportunities for farmers by assisting states to provide an incentive program for food stamp recipients to purchase additional fruits and vegetables. Independent Evaluation of Commodity Purchase Process: Helps ensure fairness for Oregon farmers by requiring an independent evaluation of the Department of Agriculture's commodity purchase process and the inclusion of perishable specialty crops. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20070523/486cbfe6/attachment.html
