Overview: Farm and Food Policy Project
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August 2005
In June/July 2005, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) made four grants totaling $4.675 million to American Farmland Trust, the Community Food Security Coalition, Environmental Defense, and the Northeast-Midwest Institute "to work collaboratively to advance four interlocking policy initiatives that will unite diverse constituencies and help to build a more sustainable agriculture and food system in the United States."
Over the next two and a half years, those four grantee organizations will provide funding to eighteen (+) additional organizations partnering in this collaborative effort. They include: the California Coalition for Food and Farming, Center for Rural Affairs, Congressional Hunger Center, Consensus Building Institute, Land Stewardship Project, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, Minnesota Project, National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, National Council of Churches, National Family Farm Coalition, Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, Organic Farming Research Foundation, Soil and Water Conservation Society, Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Western Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, and William C. Velasquez Institute.
The project's goal is to advance food and farm policy reforms that enhance the economic viability of farms, ranches and rural communities, reward environmental stewardship, and combat hunger by increasing access to healthy food. The project will pursue four, interlocking policy initiatives:
- New Agricultural Markets - In response to surging consumer demand
for organic, local and regional, and other environmentally
sustainable products, this initiative will advance policies
that increase incentives for entrepreneurial innovation, enhance
alternative food processing and distribution systems, and
expand community-based food systems and markets.
- Healthy Foods and Communities - There is mounting public concern about
hunger, obesity, and challenges of implementing new nutritional
guidelines. This initiative will advance policies that expand
access of low-income consumers to healthy foods by integrating
local and regional agriculture more closely with community
food and nutrition assistance efforts.
- Farm and Ranch Stewardship - This initiative will advance policies
that increase stewardship on farms and ranches by emphasizing
the adoption of sustainable systems, rewarding increased levels
of environmental performance, targeting priority protection
and restoration areas, streamlining and consolidating programs,
and fostering innovation and partnerships.
- Family Farm Revitalization - The current array of credit, commodity,
crop insurance, conservation, marketing order, research, extension,
and other farm-related programs fail to adequately promote
sustainable, family farm-based agriculture and in very substantial
ways subsidize its demise. This initiative will advance family
farm revitalization policies that expand the number and diversity
of sustainable farms and ranches, increase farming opportunities,
encourage diversity, and are consistent with our international
obligations.
The organizational structure for the project will consist in a Coordinating Council and a series of work groups. The Coordinating Council, to be established in the fall of 2005, will represent the interests of partner organizations within the policy collaborative; provide guidance to and oversight of the work groups and coordination staff; and provide a forum for airing concerns and resolving differences among organizations around process, policy issues, and strategies. The Northeast-Midwest Institute, assisted by the Consensus Building Institute, will serve a coordination role by facilitating internal communications, assisting with planning and scheduling, and managing project evaluation. Partners to the initiative will draft and ratify an operations and accountability agreement that lays out ground rules for participation in the project.
Policy research and development work groups will be created around each of the four initiatives. Extensive efforts will be made to encourage broad stakeholder participation in the work groups to ensure that the policy recommendations that issue from them are sound, politically viable, and widely supported.
A communications work group will be established to work on message development and media and outreach strategies. A legislative affairs work group will be formed at a later date to develop and execute legislative strategies. An advisory group will also be formed to assist with the development of an evaluation plan for the project.
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