Tuckahoe Plantation (the boyhood home of President Thomas Jefferson) in Virginia is a working farm with cattle, sheep, chickens, and rabbits that supplies meats to local co-ops Fall Line Farms and LuLu’s Local Food. The bottomless rabbit cage is progressively moved about the pastures where the rabbits can graze on grass and insects, and leave nutrient-rich manure to revitalize the soil, enhancing regrowth.
Faced with 2012’s complicated budget realities – further underscored by the failure of the congressional “supercommittee” to come up with a budget compromise and mixed agricultural lobbying groups – what direction is the financial situation headed?
I believe that the budget deficit, getting spending more in line with revenue, is one of the great challenges facing our country as a whole
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over the next decade or two. Over the long term, if we want strong, sustainable economic growth, America just cannot keep running the budget deficits we have been in the past couple of years. Now, agriculture has always been willing to do its part when called on to help reduce the deficit in the past. After all, most farmers and co-op managers I know realize that if they ran their farms or their co-ops the way the government was run, they would be out of business pretty soon. But at the same time, agriculture should not be targeted for cuts out of proportion to its impact on the budget – commodity programs, conservation, research, and rural development all make up about one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget, so obviously you cannot
USDA photo by Lance Cheung
expanding U.S. agriculture exports and global competitiveness including through substantially improved access to foreign markets through programs such as USDA’s Market Access Program; and ensuring that farmer cooperatives remain eligible to participate in federal programs for the benefit of their farmer members. A complete version of the NCFC farm bill framework can be found on our website at ncfc.org.