To farm bill or not to farm bill, that is the question. Or that's been the question occupying the Senate for the last week. The problem, as the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition explains, is that while there is a complete farm bill draft awaiting a final vote in the Senate, senators have filed almost 300 amendments, several of them unrelated to the bill itself.

There isn’t enough time to consider all these amendments, so farm-state senators have worked furiously to pull off a deal involving votes on a package of amendments followed by a vote on the complete bill. It will all culminate today, in what's called a vote-o-rama: votes on 73 amendments in quick succession. (Here’s the guide to amendments to watch we published last week on Grist -- although several of the most reform-minded did not make the cut, nor did the amendment to ban battery cages in egg production. The GMO labeling amendment led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will get a vote, however.) While this process will only get the bill through the Senate (the House is another story completely), it looks like it’s the best hope we have this year.

In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 2, a ballot initiative that established stricter guidelines for treatment of animals in the poultry and veal industries. Most notably, the measure eliminated the use of "battery cages" for laying hens, small cages crammed with birds who are often unable to even stand. Prop 2 passed by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, despite strong opposition from egg producers across the country.

Though full enforcement of the battery cage ban wasn't mandated until 2015, many producers didn't wait to make changes. Some moved out of state. Others implemented the changes early.

A group of egg producers in this latter category have joined an unexpected crusade: a push to enact rules similar to those in Prop 2 nationally. The Los Angeles Times looked at this unexpected effort last month:

In a rare alliance, the Humane Society of the United States and egg ranchers have joined forces to lobby for federal legislation that would set national standards for egg ranches similar to those implemented at JS West [a California producer that met the Proposition 2 standards early].

"No question about it: Proposition 2 was a major wake-up call to the entire U.S. egg industry," said Chad Gregory, senior vice president of United Egg Producers, a trade organization that represents most of the nation's egg farmers.

The farm bill, a massive Gordian knot of legislation that rolls through Congress every five years or so, has rolled into Congress. Not recently, mind you, it's already been under discussion and in negotiation for a year. The bill touches nearly every aspect of America's food system -- and sucks in more than a few tangential issues as well. (If you're new to the bill and its details, our page of posts on the topic is the best place to start. NPR also has a good overview.)

Right now, the Senate is considering the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012 (read: the farm bill, though ARFJA is also catchy). It left the Senate Agriculture committee and arrived on the Senate floor, where it was promptly peppered with over 90 amendments.

We went through and identified five of the 90 that are most worth paying attention to. If you have additions or questions, feel free to leave them in the comments; consider this a living document. As the bill progresses through the Senate and then the House -- perhaps even before the existing legislation expires at the end of September -- we'll track its evolution and likely impacts.

Rep. Chellie Pingree speaks with a young farmer.

Does local and organic food matter more to people in Maine than it does to other Americans? It's possible, but Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) insists that's not why she introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, a small but encouraging set of legislative reforms meant to accompany this year's farm bill.

And while the "marker bill" has yet to be embraced entirely, some parts of it have clearly influenced the Senate's draft of the larger farm bill, which is said to be about to hit the Senate floor this week. Most sustainable food advocates have seen it as a welcome push for small-scale agriculture, after decades of federal support for industrial farming.

We spoke with Pingree recently about bill, the work behind it, and her motivation to get a farm bill passed before the last one runs out in September.

Wendell Berry, Dan Barber, Rick Bayless, and Mario Batali are among 70 food movement leaders who signed a letter asking Congress to invest in healthy food.

Mario Batali, Dan Barber, Rick Bayless, and Alice Waters have had it with our  food system. These well-known chefs -- along with a group of 70 food movement celebrities, including Michael Pollan, Will Allen, Laurie David, Robert Kenner, and Wendell Berry -- have set down their sauté pans for just long enough to sign onto a letter asking Congress to invest in healthy food.

It’s a timely statement by this star-powered group, as the Senate Agriculture Committee’s draft of the 2012 Farm Bill -- a package of federal farm and food legislation representing nearly a trillion dollars -- finally hit the Senate floor this week.

And they have a point. As we’ve reported in the past, the Senate draft probably won’t improve the big picture of the food landscape as-is. In the draft, farm conservation efforts and nutrition assistance both face deep cuts, while the industrial farm lobbies have ensured that the biggest commodity farms continue to rake in subsidy payments. (Don’t believe me? Take a look at this graphic, which ran with Sunday's New York Times op-ed on the subject. It shows that a full 76 percent of the subsidy dollars distributed between 1995 and 2010 went to a mere 10 percent of the nation’s farms.)

Signed, sealed, delivered

The letter signed by Batali, Waters, and co. was initiated by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and describes the Senate bill as “falling far short of the reforms needed to come to grips with the nation’s critical food and farming challenges.” The letter continues:

It is also seriously out of step with the nation’s priorities and what the American public expects and wants from our food and farm policy. In a national poll last year, 78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more affordable and accessible should be a top priority in the farm bill. Members of the U.S. Council of Mayors and the National League of Cities have both echoed this sentiment in recent statements calling for a healthy food and farm bill.

OK, this is a pretty oversimplified depiction of the relationship between corporate interests, farmers, and consumers -- but that means it's a good starting point for anyone who isn't sure how subsidies for corn and soy led to a food system where processed crap is not only common but, for many people, inescapable. And it takes less than four minutes to watch!

Photo by Chiot's Run.

If you’ve noticed more carrot-crunching, more orange-peeling, and an abundance of leafy green salads lately, it’s probably not a coincidence. As The Washington Post reported earlier this week, Americans eat more fresh foods than they did five years ago.

The WaPo story was based on a national phone survey conducted by the Kellogg Foundation, which found that the majority of Americans are trying to eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are shopping at farmers markets at least on occasion, and say they know “a lot or a little about where their fresh fruits and vegetables come from.” These findings are interesting -- and they speak to the success of a whole array of efforts to get more of us cooking, examining what we eat, and honing in on the place where healthy and truly delicious foods intersect.

Less visible in the media landscape is the fact that the Kellogg Foundation survey also suggests that all this healthy eating has Americans looking outside themselves.

Senator Debbie Stabenow, head of the Senate Ag Committee, has pledged to get a farm bill passed by September. (Photo by Lance Cheung for the USDA.)

Right now, the Farm Bill needs a hero, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow thinks she's up for the job. Despite serious setbacks, the Democrat from Michigan is confident she and the committee she chairs can work with the House committee to pass a new farm bill before the current one runs out in September.

And, while hearing Stabenow speak at a conference last week, I just about believed her. The senator has worked on a handful of farm bills before this one and she knows what it takes. But, as I mentioned in a recent post, she’s up against a formidable round of cuts. The Tea Party-driven House Agriculture Committee not only wants to cut $33 billion (compared to the Senate’s $23 billion), but they want to make most of those cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps).

HBO has a history of tackling serious American health-care crises. In recent years, the cable network has taken on addiction and Alzheimer's to much critical acclaim. And now the network has turned its attention to another huge health problem: obesity and its enormous economic, emotional, social, and health cost on individuals, families, communities, and the country at large.

As Americans have gained weight in recent years, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other obesity-related health problems have also skyrocketed. Rates of Type 2 diabetes (once known as “adult-onset diabetes”) are soaring among kids. And this is a generation of people that may well die at a younger age than their parents, largely because of medical concerns associated with excess weight.

These facts have become commonplace to those of us who have been paying attention. Still, The Weight of the Nation: Confronting America's Obesity Epidemic serves as a clarion call to the country to take action -- and fast -- to combat this pernicious, complex problem that has myriad root causes.

Photo by Tracy Potter-Fins, taken at County Rail Farm.

By the time the next Farm Bill expires in five years, 125,000 American farmers will have retired. This fact may well be the biggest threat to national food security, but you wouldn’t know it if you’ve been following this year’s Farm Bill hearings.

Instead, the conversation is about “managing risk” for the Big Five commodity crops (i.e. crop insurance, subsidies, and margins for large agricultural interests) and not about the challenges to our food system as a whole. The recent House Committee on Agriculture’s Farm Bill “Field Hearings” were dominated by established farmers, with little if any time for new farmers to talk about their needs. Here in New York’s Hudson Valley, a group of beginning farmers considered a trip to the Saranac Lake to participate in one of these hearings, but decided against it when we learned that there would be no time to add our experiences to the chosen panelists. Beginning farmers like us didn’t fare much better in similar Senate hearings.

That’s why it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the needs of the next generation have yet to be met in the current draft of the Farm Bill, recently approved by the Senate Committee on Agriculture.