U.S. Department of Agriculture
Feds to provide $50M in food assistance to Ohio
Ohio’s foodbanks say they’re desperate as summer is turning to fall. Demand has skyrocketed with increasing food costs at the same time that their resources have evaporated. And with current supply chain disruptions, they need to order food now if they hope to have it when winter comes. And even though the state is sitting […]
Vilsack: America’s voluntary approach to agriculture is better than Europe’s mandates
BOONE, Iowa — The more than $1 billion the federal government is devoting to voluntary efforts to reduce agriculture’s adverse effects on the environment is a better long-term strategy than mandating new rules for farmers, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Tuesday. While state and federal officials in the United States have tended to […]
Farm bill season arrives: What’s the outlook for 2023?
WASHINGTON — Over the course of the next year, lawmakers on the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture committees will draft a new federal farm bill that will shape food, farm, conservation and nutrition programs across the country for the next five years. The omnibus law that began 90 years ago as crop supports now has […]
Ohio AG joins with other AGs in suit against gender inclusion language in food benefits
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has signed on to a lawsuit pushing back against federal rewrites to include anti-discrimination language in food assistance programs. Attorneys General from more than 20 states filed suit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a memorandum regarding the Food and Nutrition Services complaint policy on gender […]
The elephant in the room is destroying family farms, rural communities and our democracy
I love farming and have been doing it all my life, but I told my kids not to come back to the farm, because there’s no future in it. That’s the sad truth. Over the last year on Capitol Hill, there have been multiple hearings and bills and even an executive order to address what […]
Vilsack offers integrated plan for domestic food production
The Biden administration has set aside billions of dollars to help the nation’s food supply chain recover from the coronavirus pandemic — and, more recently, the looming global effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and on Wednesday, it announced new funding and a comprehensive overview of how those initiatives mesh. “A transformed food system […]
Formula shortage exposes familiar weakness in our safety net
Last week, the Ohio Department of Health requested that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allow greater flexibility in its social assistance programs around baby formula. The program the Ohio Department of Health is most interested in is the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, one of the […]
Agriculture secretary pressed about pandemic relief funds for farmers
WASHINGTON — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack faced questions on how his agency is doling out emergency pandemic aid and fostering collaboration with historically Black colleges during a Thursday hearing before the House Agriculture Committee. Committee Chairman David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, asked Vilsack for “critical updates on the implementation of pandemic relief programs, including the […]
Forest Service in ‘paradigm shift’ to use logging, controlled burns to prevent wildfires
The Biden administration will use $3 billion from last year’s infrastructure law to revamp the federal approach to wildfire management, introducing a 10-year plan to deal with the large swaths of the West scientists consider most at risk of destructive blazes. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, announced the new strategy in Phoenix, […]
Will Joe Biden’s executive order spark real change in food production?
By Darvin Bentlage President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order aimed at increasing competition across all sectors of the economy. This is a long time coming and a good first step in addressing a number of long term problems. One important point of interest for agriculture is the change to the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Act […]
Farmers call for voluntary, financially appealing programs to fight climate change
By Perry Beeman, States Newsroom Congress should use voluntary, financially appealing programs to encourage farmers and foresters to help address climate change, experts told the U.S. Senate agriculture committee Thursday. Speakers from the corn and soybean fields of Illinois to the rice fields of Arkansas told the panel that it would be best to work through existing […]
How urban planning and housing policy helped create ‘food apartheid’ in US cities
Hunger is not evenly spread across the U.S., nor within its cities. Even in the the richest parts of urban America there are pockets of deep food insecurity, and more often than not it is Black and Latino communities that are hit hardest. As an urban planning academic who teaches a course on food justice, […]