Jamie McLeod-Skinner has always supported Oregon’s farmers. In March 2018, she spoke out in support of the 2018 Farm Bill. In a Letter to the Editor of the East Oregonian.
While we face different challenges today, the 2018 farm bill should still provide solutions for farmers and those needing food while sustaining our natural resources.
This is especially important for our family farms, which have been evaporating like puddles on a hot day.
Jamie McLeod-Skinner
The original 1933 farm bill helped pull us out of the Great Depression by addressing market failures that decimated prices and made it unprofitable for farmers to move food to the cities where people were hungry. While we face different challenges today, the 2018 farm bill should still provide solutions for farmers and those needing food while sustaining our natural resources.
This is especially important for our family farms, which have been evaporating like puddles on a hot day. Tens of thousands of small and mid-sized farms — those with less than a thousand acres — have been lost in the past few decades. Some farm bills have focused benefits on huge, corporate-owned farms, leaving smaller farms struggling to compete in an unfair market. To survive, smaller farms were forced to grow commodity crops for overseas markets. The 2018 farm bill should correct that imbalance. It should incentivize family farms to grow real food. It should make it possible for carrots and broccoli to cost less than a box of mac and cheese. It should be good for our family farmers and good for our health.
Read Jamie McLeod-Skinner’s full comments on the East Oregonian.
