Working For Jobs

by David Roberts.

Noah & the Whale is a UK indie-folk band. If you guessed what their name is about without googling, you may be a terminal hipster (it’s a tribute to the film The Squid & the Whale by director Noah Baumbach).

The band is pretty well known in the UK new folk scene; at one point or another both Emmy the Great and Laura Marling have performed with them.

Last Night on Earth, their third LP, came out earlier this year. It’s got a few more electronic textures and is a little poppier, but the songs retain their sturdy classicism and romanticism. Charlie Fink’s voice and lyrics are old-fashioned in an appealing sort of way. You can imagine them doing these songs in a lounge.

This song, the poppiest track and lead single, is “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.”

Related Links:

Friday music blogging: Boy & Bear

Friday music blogging: Lloyd, with Andre 3000

Friday music blogging: Adam Hurst and an elegy for hope ‘n’ change

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Build It Green/Oakland, CA

About Build It Green
Build It Green is a membership supported non-profit organization whose mission is to promote healthy, energy- and resource-efficient homes in California. Established in 2003, we offer a comprehensive package of local government support, professional training, collaboration forums, consumer education, and green product marketing to a range of stakeholders.
Sponsorship provides companies a way to further support California green building programs and initiatives while giving the sponsor increased visibility and recognition. Sponsors help support Build It Green's programs and initiatives to transform the building industry and expand the market for healthy, energy conserving and resource efficient buildings in California. These activities stimulate demand for green building products and services.

Position Overview:
Reporting to the Director of Marketing and Communications, the Project Manager will be responsible for planning and implementation of the Sponsorship program of Build It Green, including solicitation, cultivation and stewardship of corporate sponsors. The Manager will secure corporate sponsors that provide discounted products, underwriting for educational resources, and direct financial support for GreenPoint Rated homeowner education, Build It Green professional members, and other Build It Green events. This position is offered at 3 days per week for a four month period, with the potential to become a full time position.

Responsibilities:
•Collaborate with staff leadership to determine program parameters and deliverables.
•Identify, cultivate and strategically solicit corporate sponsors and educational partners.
•Maintain thorough knowledge of Build It Green programs and marketing initiatives for the purposes of accurately and persuasively communicating achievements and goals
•Create and maintain a high level of personal prospect contact with appropriate and relevant executive leadership to attract broader corporate interest, support and investment in Build It Green programs.
•Organize and conduct activities designed to build and sustain strong relationships with corporate contacts.
•Ensure customer service standards and corporate commitments are upheld.
•Work with the marketing team to support the development of related collateral materials.
•Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Experience/Qualifications:
•Minimum of five years of corporate development experience in a non-profit setting.
•Proven track record of closing and renewing six and seven figure gifts, specifically within the corporate sector.
•Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Ease and experience dealing with senior corporate executives a must.
•Strong organizational skills and computer literacy are essential.
•Ability to work independently, as well as a member of a team required.

Compensation:
This position is a part-time, temporary opportunity at $40 – $50 per hour, DOE.

To Apply
To apply for this position, submit your cover letter, resume, and references to Jobs@BuildItGreen.org. Please enter Job Code – Sponsorship Project Manager in the subject line of your email.

Applications will be accepted until October 14, 2011. Applications will be screened for qualifications and experience, and all required application elements. Not all applicants who meet the minimum qualifications will be offered an interview.

Build It Green is an Equal Opportunity Employer and strives to reflect the diverse community it serves. Applicants who contribute to this diversity are strongly encouraged to apply.

No phone calls please.

Apply To Job

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by Tom Laskawy.

Back in the heady days of our youth when anything seemed possible—you know, 2009—USDA Chief Tom Vilsack called for 100,000 new farmers. He even followed it up the next year with $17 million dollars in grants for the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Training Program designed to help educate and mentor young farmers and ranchers.

Farmers, after all, are an aging bunch. According to the 2007 USDA Agricultural Census, the median age of farmers in the U.S. is 57 years old and rising. Sixty may be the new 50, but even so, America needs the next generation of farmers to step up.

It’s not surprising that farming hasn’t been a very attractive field for newcomers. New farmers face high land and fuel costs, corporate consolidation, price volatility, and cost-cutting
retailers. They’re often asked to work long hours, use heavy equipment, and handle dangerous chemicals —all for a low-margin business. And the spike in commodities like corn, wheat, and soy, while a boon to some current farmers, is raising the bar ever higher for beginners.

If we learned anything from the housing bubble, it’s that there’s nothing Wall Street loves more than real estate. Land around cities is seen as too valuable to farm. And, as Tom Philpott dug up in his post on commodities speculation, analysts on Wall Street are specifically hyping farmland as an “investment vehicle” to their clients. If enough investors take their advisers up on the suggestion, however, this vehicle may force potential young farmers right off the road.

Of course, an excellent recent report from WBUR details that the problem goes beyond just the upfront costs of land and equipment. Banks don’t have much interest in investing in first-time conventional commodity farmers. The article profiles Austin Bruns, a young farmer who grows soybeans and corn under contract for Monsanto on 150 acres of Nebraska company land, sharing equipment to make ends meet. An economist quoted in the piece addresses the real estate conundrum:

[Some people are] sitting in New York [and] saying, ‘Well, I don’t
know, I’ve never even been to Nebraska, but by golly, I’m going to buy
some Nebraska land,’ And you have these groups coming
together … that are buying farmland [and] driving up farmland prices
to prices we’ve not seen before.

Banks have been through too many farm crises to want to bet on a new crop of commodities farmers. That said, the USDA is doing what it can to help. Earlier today, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan announced $18 million in new grants for beginning farmers. In a press conference, she said she just returned from a farm tour where she “got an earful … about land prices.” The good news was that a significant amount was dedicated to sustainable practices training or granted to sustainable organizations across the country. She did, however, admit the USDA currently lacks sufficient “tools in the toolbox”—read: funding—to address rising land prices; she hopes it’s something the upcoming Farm Bill negotiations will include. 

Looking at the grants, it does seem like much of the excitement among beginning farmers seems to reside in organic fruit and vegetable production rather than in adding to the river of corn and soy that flows from the Midwest. In fact, it’s possible that more conventional commodity farmers will make the switch to organics.

One inspiring model appeared in The New York Times Magazine last year. The article profiled two old hands  —husband and wife farmers Kurt and Karen Unkel of Kinder, La. After many years of struggling with all these issues, the pair abandoned conventional rice farming (including selling into commodities export markets) in favor of organic rice grown for local markets. “I
started this because I could not see the future in conventional
farming,” Kurt Unkel told the magazine. And their risk paid off. But the article left me wondering: Are transitions like this something the USDA will ever fully embrace?

With Wall Street and international investors bidding up the price of the land itself, it’s not hard to imagine a future where most farmers aren’t owner-operators but are hired hands on massive corporate farms. To avoid such a fate, we’ll need more than just training programs and enthusiasm: It requires a willingness by the federal government to take on Wall Street and anti-competitive corporations. And so far, I’m not impressed.

Related Links:

Lost in the maize [VIDEO]

Environmental leaders to Congress: Don’t stop funding conservation on farms

Cantaloupe food poisoning outbreak is now the deadliest in 12 years

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by Elly Blue.

Elly Blue is on a monthlong
Dinner & Bikes tour around the
western U.S., along with Portland bike filmmaker Joe Biel and
traveling vegan chef Joshua
Ploeg. This is one of her thrice-weekly dispatches from the road about
bicycle culture and economy. Read them all here.

Spearfish, S.D.: Last year, on the intergalactic Bikestravaganza tour, Joe and I were
flabbergasted to discover a mutant bike culture thriving in this tiny city in
the heart of the region a friend calls Outdoorsia. This year we couldn’t wait to
come back.

The day before we were to arrive, driving into the sprawling
motordom of nearby Rapid City, we spotted a guy on a tallbike merging with
traffic on a major arterial street. We asked about it at our event that night and
were met with shrugs. “It’s a frat thing,” speculated a buff young
pedicab operator. “They make some of the guys ride them.”

But minutes later, the tallbiker showed up. It was Mark Smith,
one of the founders of the Spearfish bicycle collective we’d met last year. He
had moved to Rapid City for college and brought his own piece of mutant bike
culture with him.

The next day, back at the collective in Spearfish, we reminisced about the year
before, when our event was preceded by handmade ice cream sodas and what was
billed as a cruiser ride, but was in fact a parade through town featuring nearly
a dozen mutant bikes: tall bikes, swing bikes. There was even a kangaroo
bike—a Mad Max contraption on which the pedals were set adjacent to one
another, rather than opposite, requiring the rider to pedal with both legs
moving in parallel rotation, necessitating a hopping motion.

This year, the mutant bikes were mostly hibernating for the winter, as was the
new bike-powered ice cream churn (sigh). But local ingenuity was apparent at every
turn. A young farmer showed up with a juicer and a box of vegetables and
produced pitchers full of frothy, blood-red juice. John Williams, our host at
the collective this year, rode up on his tallbike and told us that the town is now
rolling with retrodirect bikes—bikes with drive trains engineered to move
forward while you pedal either forward or backward.

Cappy, a jovial homesteader whose school bus we’d slept in the year before,
updated us on his weird and wonderful projects: the waterwheel, which runs off of an irrigation
ditch, now connects to a water tower; he’s also putting a green roof on the bike
tree.

I’ve been struggling all month to articulate the connection
between bikes and food—the two key ingredients of this great West-wide tour.
Cappy unwittingly made the connection for me in the most unexpected way.

“I hope this doesn’t offend you,” he said, jerking
his thumb back towards our vegan feast. Then he told us that he and another member
of the collective plan to go deer hunting this winter—by bike.

“We’ll bring a trailer,” he said, rubbing his
hands together and grinning.

Related Links:

Is this the perfect urban bike?

Check out this high-tech prosthetic for amputee cyclists

Red means stop, except for bikers in Kansas

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Southern California Edison/Rosemead, CA

This position will be in the Solicitations & Contracting Support division within Southern California Edison’s (SCE) Customer Service Business Unit (CSBU). The successful candidate will provide statewide marketing analysis support for third party solicitations in the Customer Energy Efficiency and Solar (CEES) division.

Typical responsibilities will include:
•Analyzing consultant work authorizations and change orders for the internal database.
•Developing and analyzing input data, running scenarios, analyzing and summarizing results, preparing standard and ad hoc reports, and communicating results to stakeholders.
•Ensuring regulatory compliance in accordance with terms and conditions and purchase order requirements.
•Interacting and collaborating with regulatory, controls and compliance to meet business needs.
•Developing and supporting internal stakeholders in the development of statements of work.
•Maintaining a safety conscious work environment by following Edison safety protocols and safe work practices.
•Performing other responsibilities and duties as assigned.

Basic Qualification:

• Must have experience developing statements of work.
Job Requirements:
•A Bachelor’s Degree in Business or a related field or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
•Typically possesses six or more years of experience in the field of analysis.
•Demonstrated experience providing market analysis support for third party solicitations.
•Demonstrated experience providing oversight of terms and conditions and purchase order regulatory requirements.
•Demonstrated experience consulting with internal and external business partners and providing subject matter expertise on market analysis.
•Demonstrated experience using Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
•Demonstrated ability to follow Edison safety protocols and safe work practices.
•Must demonstrate the ability to integrate work across relevant areas, develop the business and services to enhance customer satisfaction and productivity, manage risks appropriately, develop and execute business plans, manage information, and provide exceptional service to internal and external customers.
•Must demonstrate effective resource and project planning, decision making, results delivery, team building, and the ability to stay current with relevant technology and innovation.
•Must demonstrate strong ethics, influence and negotiation, leadership, interpersonal skills, communication, and the ability to effectively manage stress and engage in continuous learning.

Preferences:

•None.

Comments:

•Additional testing may be required as part of the selection process for this position.
•Edison International and Southern California Edison reserve the right to close or cancel a posting at any time.
•Edison International is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
•Candidates for this position must be legally authorized to work directly as employees for any employer in the United States without visa sponsorship.

Apply To Job

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by Arne Jungjohann.

This is bad news for nuclear advocates: Nuclear power turns
out even more expensive than we thought. According to a study by Arthur D.
Little, the four German nuclear utilities (E.ON, RWE, EnBW, Vattenfall) face
costs of at least $25 billion for decommissioning their reactors. After the Fukushima
disaster, Germany decided to say goodbye
to nuclear by switching off eight reactors immediately while the remaining
nine are scheduled for a gradual phaseout by 2022.

Of the many myths
about nuclear power, we kinda knew that the myth “nuclear power is cheap”
is not true. The stunner is how expensive it turns out to be when you start
factoring in its real costs, according to this analyst from a public bank in Germany:

“The quantification of
dismantling costs is in line with our estimate amounting to 1 billion euros per
block,” but “such estimates comprise several uncertainties”,
said Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (LBBW) analyst Bernhard Jeggle.

There you have it: It costs at least $1.4 billion to
dismantle one reactor unit. The utilities are required by law to build up a
cash pile to finance the decommissioning. Still, one can expect them to raise
rates for their customers. In a regulated market without competition, this
would hit ratepayers. In a deregulated electricity market — like Germany — this
makes nuclear power less competitive. Customers can choose their power provider
and switch to one without nuclear — such as city municipalities or green power
brokers (which is very easy).
By factoring in the true costs of nuclear power, we are getting closer to a
level playing field among different energy sources. This is Environmental Economics 101: The
market sends only true price signals if external costs (such as pollution) are
being internalized. If we had the perfect market and all external costs of
fossil fuels (climate change, air pollution) and nuclear (decommission, contamination,
full insurance against an accident, final waste deposit) were truly factored
in, renewable energy would today already be cost competitive.

In many countries, the nuclear industry has been pampered
with billions of dollars in subsidies while emerging technologies received
comparably little support (e.g. the United
States). Green Budget Europe, a German think tank, calculated nuclear subsidies over the last half century to $230 billion for Germany alone. It’s one thing to support the deployment of renewable energy and efficiency technologies. It’s another to internalize those costs that the fossil fuel and the nuclear industry burden our societies with. Eventually, we need to do both to transition to a low-carbon economy that is powered completely by renewable energy.

Related Links:

German Small Solar Cheaper than Big U.S. Solar

Russia decides there’s no problem with Chernobyl-style reactors

Germany is spending its climate change money on coal plants

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

by Daniel J. Weiss.

Cross-posted from the Center for American Progress. This post was coauthored by Valeri Vasquez, special assistant for energy policy at the Center for American Progress.

On Sept. 19, President Barack Obama announced his plan to reduce
the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years, including raising
$1.5 trillion by closing special interest loopholes and other revenue
raisers. This includes eliminating $41 billion in tax loopholes for the oil and gas industry [PDF, p. 63] over the next decade.

Big Oil is predictably opposed to losing its unnecessary tax breaks. The American Petroleum Institute, or API, the oil industry’s lobbying muscle, quickly claimed that “the administration plan would hurt jobs and investment.”

But this claim ignores the fact that the big five oil companies—BP,
Chevron, ConocoPhilips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—have ample financial
resources that dwarf the value of these tax breaks.  These companies
enjoy billions in cash reserves, made nearly $1 trillion in profits over
the past decade, and at least one company (ExxonMobil) pays a lower
effective tax rate than the average American family.

In other words, Big Oil can readily afford to contribute its “fair share” to reduce America’s debt.

A Federal Reserve report released this month documented the massive cash reserves held by American corporations. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Corporations have a higher share of cash
on their balance sheets than at any time in nearly half a century, as
businesses build up buffers rather than invest in new plants or hiring.

Nonfinancial companies held more than $2
trillion in cash and other liquid assets at the end of June, the Federal
Reserve reported Friday, up more than $88 billion from the end of
March. Cash accounted for 7.1% of all company assets, everything from
buildings to bonds, the highest level since 1963.

The big five oil companies are among those corporations that amassed
huge cash reserves. In fact, a Center for American Progress (CAP) analysis of company Security and
Exchange Commission filings determined that the three largest American
oil companies—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil—had $27 billion in
cash or equivalent assets as of midyear 2011.

BP and Shell, the two largest foreign oil companies that operate in
the United States, had combined cash reserves of nearly $32 billion at
the end of last year (the latest data available).  Added together, these
five companies are sitting on cash resources of $59 billion, which is 30 times more than the estimated $2 billion in annual tax breaks that these companies receive.

The past decade was very prosperous for the big five oil companies due in part to high oil prices, including the record of $147 per barrel in July 2008. A CAP assessment determined that these companies made more than $900 billion in profit from 2001 to 2010.
High oil prices this year earned them a whopping $67 billion in six
months. These funds come from the pockets of American drivers forced to
pay up to $4 per gallon for gasoline.

At this rate, Big Oil could easily exceed $100 billion in profits for
2011. Why can’t these companies afford to forgo $2 billion annually in
taxpayers’ money?

On Sept. 19, President Obama implored wealthy individuals and corporations to help reduce the deficit, too:

Those who have done well, including me,
should pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that made
our success possible. We shouldn’t get a better deal than ordinary
families get.

Yet at least one oil company, ExxonMobil, has a much better deal than
ordinary families. It made $310 billion in profits over the past decade
and another $21 billion in the first six months of 2011 alone. A Washington Post expose based on a CAP analysis, however, found that ExxonMobil had a lower effective
tax rate than the typical middle-class family. ExxonMobil’s effective
tax rate was 18 percent while average households pay 21 percent—15
percent more than Exxon’s tax rate.

The Post determined that these tax loopholes “have helped make
the oil industry one of the most profitable, when measured by cash flow
and return on investment.”

API claims that Big Oil needs the tax loopholes to create jobs and
make investments. But are the big five oil companies investing these
funds in job creation or clean energy? The evidence says no.

“Profits and Pink Slips: How Big Oil and Gas Companies Are Not Creating U.S. Jobs or Paying Their Fair Share,” by the House Natural Resources Committee Democrats, determined [PDF] that Big Oil companies shed jobs over the last five years:

Despite generating $546 billion in profits
between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP combined to
reduce their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees over that time.

Just in 2010 alone, the big 5 oil
companies reduced their global workforce by a combined 4,400 employees,
while making a combined $73 billion in profits.

So if the big five companies aren’t hiring additional workers, are they investing in research and development? The Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that the companies invested relatively little in overall research
and development: “Total R&D expenditure of the five [largest oil]
firms in 2010 was $3.6 billion.” This was just 4.7 percent of their $76
billion in profits.

The CRS noted that “it is difficult to determine how much of the
R&D spending … was spent on green R&D projects from data
published by the oil majors themselves.” These investments would provide
financial and energy security for Americans in the grip of the volatile
global petroleum market and help mitigate the climate change driven by
fossil fuel consumption. But it did compile the information on
alternative fuels and cleantech investments provided by the big five
companies to the Senate Finance Committee for a May hearing on Oil and Gas Tax Incentives and Rising Energy Prices.
It appears that these companies spent a miserly 1.2 percent on
alternative fuels and cleantech research in 2010:

This finding confirms a 2009 CAP analysis that determined these companies devoted a mere 4 percent of their
collective 2008 earnings to cleantech research and development. That
year was their second-highest profit level.

Clearly the big five oil companies are not investing their huge
profits in hiring workers or conducting alternative fuels research and
development. Instead, many of these companies use their profits to buy
back their own stock, an action that enriches their board of directors,
senior executives, and shareholders.

These companies spent slightly more than one-quarter of their profits
on stock buybacks in the first half of 2011. This dwarfs the previous
year’s investment in research and development (see attached Excel spreadsheet). Yet the big five oil companies still claw to keep $20 billion worth of tax breaks.

President Obama has posed stark choices to reduce the federal budget deficit:

Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to
pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to
pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.

Either we gut education and medical
research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most
profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other
companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.

He proposed that the big five oil companies contribute $20 billion
over a decade since these extraordinarily rich companies hold billions
of dollars in cash reserves, made nearly $1 trillion in profits, and the
biggest of them pays a lower effective federal tax rate than the
average American family.

It’s up to Congress to support seniors, students, workers, and
middle-class families instead of genuflecting to Big Oil companies and
their lobbyists once again.

Related Links:

Valdez redux? Scientists sound alarm over key Gulf fish species

BP will be messing up Australia next

How is Obama’s overall record on the environment?

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

The Vote Solar Initiative/San Francisco, CA

The Vote Solar Initiative is a non-profit, public advocacy organization working to bring solar energy into the mainstream.

Vote Solar is seeking a Solar Policy Advocate to develop and implement campaigns for pro-solar policies, primarily at the state level, via regulatory efforts and grassroots advocacy.

RESPONSIBILITIES
The Solar Advocate will develop and carry out campaigns to implement critical pro-solar policy changes in key states. These include financial support (public goods funds, solar carve-outs in renewable portfolio standards, tax credits, standard offer contracts and other solar procurement strategies), interconnection standards, net metering policies, and fair rate design. For assigned states, the Advocate will develop collaborative relationships with local advocates, research the policy changes needed for a successful solar market, and design campaigns to make them happen. Campaigns may involve intervening in proceedings before regulatory commissions, developing programs with utilities, municipal efforts, or legislation. The Advocate will carry out research to assess solar energy policies and potential; prepare written materials for broad dissemination to policymakers, the media, and the general public; assist in drafting testimony and formal briefs in regulatory proceedings; assist attorneys in regulatory proceedings; organize grassroots support; and develop and lead compelling public campaigns to further policy goals.

QUALIFICATIONS
Applicants should have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, knowledge of the field, and three years of relevant work experience on energy issues. Demonstrated dedication to the promotion of clean, renewable sources of electricity generation is a must. Organizing, campaigning, and leadership skills important.

REQUIRED SKILLS
Strong quantitative, analytical, and research skills; proficiency with computer spreadsheet and word processing software; ability to write well for scientific and general audiences; ability develop Vote Solar’s strategy for regulatory proceedings; ability to write and present formal briefs and testimony; familiarity with economics and public policy; excellent public speaking skills; ability to organize and implement grassroots campaigns; ability to inspire consensus and work collaboratively. We want campaigners!

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
Detailed understanding of solar energy technologies; electric industry operations, regulations, and legal framework; and electricity modeling techniques. Prior experience with advocacy before legislatures, government agencies and regulatory commissions helpful. Knowledge of energy-related environmental issues strongly preferred.

POSITION DETAILS
This position will be based at Vote Solar’s San Francisco office (although accommodations may be considered). Salary commensurate with experience and training. Excellent benefits.

APPLICATION PROCESS
Please send letter of interest, with resume and writing sample

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Stantec.
CA – California, Irvine
Overview: Our Transportation group provides comprehensive planning, design, and engineering services for all phases of airports and aviation, bridge, rail, roadway, and transit projects. This is the place where great…

Salary: . Date posted: 09/27/2011

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by Twilight Greenaway.

The
message is loud and clear: The environmental community wants to get out ahead
of the 2012 Farm Bill debate.

Yesterday,
a group of 56 leadership
organizations representing over a million members across the nation sent
Congress a very public memo. The groups ranged from the Environmental Working Group to the World Wildlife
Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Their
message: Industrial farming has no place in this country without parallel measures aimed at
stopping soil erosion, lessening pesticide use, and cleaning up the air and soil
on and around farms. The statement reads:

The progress farmers
have made is real, but pressing problems remain unaddressed; we will lose the
ground we have gained if Congress fails to ensure that conservation intensifies
in lock-step with production.

The
bulk of the deliberation about the next Farm Bill isn’t supposed to begin until
next year, so why the rush? There’s been speculation that the congressional
Super Committee currently strategizing about the national debt might start
making cuts to conservation programs early. As Don Carr of the
Environmental Working Group writes in his latest article, Americans’
Views of Industrial Agriculture By the Numbers,  “Many informed observers believe
the committee will effectively re-write the farm bill this fall, a full year
ahead of schedule.” (For more context, read the EWG’s primer, Why the Farm
Bill Matters.

Since the last Farm Bill,
conservation programs have been funded at a baseline of $6.5 billion a year. That
might sound like a hefty sum, but it’s only 7 percent of the total funding
the Farm Bill allocated in 2008 (the bulk of it—around 73 percent in 2008—went to funds for nutritional programs such as SNAP, and around 16 percent went
to other farm programs, including direct payments and crop insurance). The
coalition of 56 organizations has made a list of recommendations, including (first and foremost) that Congress maintain that 6.5 billion amount. They’re
also stressing the importance of linking other types of farm subsidies and insurance
payouts to efforts to improve land, water, and air quality. 

A new David
& Lucile Packard Foundation
poll released in concert
with the statement reflects American’s attitudes about agriculture, the
environment, and the federal budget. (And
they didn’t just speak with enviros and sustainable foodies either: The
pollsters surveyed to around 1,200 random people around the nation.) Among other findings,
the results reveal that:

 Americans value conservation programs with environmental
benefits more than programs with economic benefits such as job creation or
recreation dollars.

75 percent said helping family farmers stay in business
should be a top or high priority in agriculture policy

78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more
affordable and more accessible should be a top priority in the next Farm Bill.

57 percent did not agree with cutting funding for farm
conservation programs, saying they save money by preventing pollution.

At a time when much of the interest in
food and farming can seem self-interested—we want to know how that pesticide
residue will impact our own personal health, or whether there will be wild
salmon available in our neighborhood grocery store—it’s heartening to know
that the public is also prioritizing our shared natural capital. 

Those numbers also suggest
that the grassroots organizing around the bill in 2008 may have had more
of an impact on Americans outside liberal coastal cities than many of in the
food movement initially suspected. Four years ago eaters and policy makers put
forward a positive vision of a holistic “food bill” that will one day balance
healthy food with healthier farmland.

Claudia Emken, a conservation policy
advocate for the Illinois Stewardship Alliance—one of the 56 organizations
behind yesterday’s recommendations—did well to reflect this holistic vision
by tying the need to support non-commodity (or healthy “specialty crops”) in
her statement on the issue.

It is critical that the 2012 farm bill
funds programs that show proven soil and water conservation benefits and that
are open to all sectors of agriculture production, including fruit, vegetable,
and organic growers. Local foods production and delivery is a growing industry
and needs to be treated equally.

Of course, whether or not
those in Washington will heed any of these recommendations is a big question. Grist
will be doing more to dig in to the conservation debate—and to explain why it
matters—in the coming weeks. But this much is clear: Farm Bill 2012 has swiftly
gone from an abstract concern worth pontificating about to a very pointed demand: Whatever
you do now, Congress, don’t stop funding conservation on farms.

Related Links:

Cantaloupe food poisoning outbreak is now the deadliest in 12 years

Feds help GMO salmon swim upstream

Food Studies: why I love in-flight meals

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist