“Arkansas Traveler” is an old-time song of folk humor that tells of a well-heeled dandy who gets lost while travelling across the Ozark Mountains. He comes upon a backwoods farmer and shouts out: “Hey farmer, where does this road go?” Not missing a beat, the farmer says: “I’ve lived here all my life, stranger, and it ain’t gone nowhere, yet.”

A corny joke, yet the current US Congress has traveled that same nowhere road all year long in a fruitless attempt to reach agreement on a rewrite of America’s basic Farm Bill. This failure is a very big deal and wholly irresponsible. The bill is a five-year, $700 billion package that not only doles out federal crop subsidies (which have largely gone to huge agribusiness operations), but it also provides food stamps for millions of poor families, money for vital ag conservation programs, and economic development work in thousands of rural counties.

So why the dead end? It’s caused by the same plutocratic/theocratic nuttiness of Republican lawmakers who put their extremist right-wing ideology and corporate servitude above all the other needs of regular people and our country. Because of their internal chaos and political grandstanding, the old status quo Farm Bill had to be extended for another year. Yet, that’s not all bad news, for a whole new constituency has begun rallying to write a truly innovative, forward-looking farm-food-labor climate bill that fosters the Common Good above the exploitative greed of today’s monopolistic, narrow-minded agribusiness complex.

Let’s turn the dead-end year into a positive opportunity to build public support in 2024 for fundamental democratic change in America’s food direction. The way to get there is not through more back-room Washington deals, but by going straight to the people, mobilizing family farmers, food workers, consumers, climate activists, and others behind a revitalized system that works for us.

Photo by Aurora Borealis on Unsplash

Do something

To learn more about the Farm Bill, we recommend Farm Aid’s Farm Bill 101 guide, and their regular updates. (They’ll also give you actions to take when it’s time!)

We’re also fans of RuralOrganizing.org for getting involved in rural support all over the country— after all, the Farm Bill is not just a food bill, it’s a rural infrastructure bill.

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