To AG Committee Chairman-Failed Farm Policy

2012 FARM BILL

It is now well documented that the United States is the unhealthiest society in the World. We now have epidemics of obesity, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. The evidence is overwhelming that over consumption of corn fed fatty meat and corn based hi- sugar, high- fat content process food is the cause. Even more importantly long term is the destruction of our topsoil and the nutrient contamination of every river and estuary Nationwide caused by corn overproduction and overlooked short cuts in production methods.

US. Farm policy has encouraged corn over-production since the end of World War II, resulting in a glut of cheap unhealthy corn based products which dominate supermarkets. Its time to reverse this flawed agricultural policy and make these products more expensive and therefore less dominant in the American diet.

Three actions required to do this should be enacted now:

1. Reduce fertilizer applications rates by half
2. Require minimum soil management criteria specifically minimum crop rotations and cover crops as recommended by soil scientists.
3. Require treatment of CAFO manure.

Suggest that you call the following expert witnesses:

1.Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health ask him to brief you on the 2010 World Cancer Study and Harvard’s Nurses Health Study.

2. Authors Magdoff of The University of Vermont and van Es of Cornell University to testify about minimal soil management criteria. Also Iowa organic Dairy Farmer, soil scientist, and author Francis Thicke PhD.

3. EPA’s Benjamin Grumbles who chaired the 2008 Gulf Task Force Action Plan, which reported the continuing failure to restore the great Mississippi Watershed.

4. Current Chairman of the USGS National NAWGA assessment, which monitors water quality Nationwide including the Chesapeake Bay and other estuaries.

Nothing could be more urgent than changing the declining direction of the nations health and Natural Resources.