What's Up With The Farm Bill?
For the past few months AFF ramped up its 2012 Farm Bill effort to influence the Agriculture Committees’ proposal to the Super Committee. In light of the Super Committee’s failure, the Agriculture Committees’ proposal was never released, but from what we’ve heard, there was both good news and bad news.
Although the cuts were disproportionate and disappointing, some great policy changes increased forest owner access to existing Farm Bill tools. We are working to continue to include these policy changes and others in the next stage of Farm Bill discussions.
Much of our success is attributed to the great work completed by our grassroots and grasstops networks. We had over 450 messages with our Farm Bill priorities sent to over 120 Members of Congress. We also had several op/eds published and were even able to pitch and publish some earned media. Take a peek at some of our efforts below:
- Tim Gossman was featured in a story in the Rochester Post-Bulletin
- Clint Bentz submitted a piece to the Oregonian.
- Craig and Janet Olver submitted a piece to the Scranton Times-Tribune
- John Alter submitted a piece to the Jackson County Floridian
- Libby Jordan submitted a piece to the Fayetteville Observer
- Ross Korpela submitted a piece to the The Cloquet Pine Journal
- Jo Arington and Mike Prouty submitted a piece to the Wausau Daily Herald.
