NOFA-VT's Farm Bill Platform

The forthcoming Opportunities in Organic Act, offers  a suite of flexible, easy-to-access tools to reduce barriers to organic agriculture, including for Black farmers, Indigenous farmers, farmers of color and producers historically excluded from organic certification. It will modernize reimbursements for organic certification, increase technical expertise and support within public institutions and NGOs and expand support for producers transitioning to organic.

The Agriculture Resilience Act will harness the power of agriculture to confront our climate and biological crises. With urgent action now, including the investments and policy reforms in the ARA, we can meet our climate goals and dramatically improve our food system while engaging farmers in making the critical changes necessary for our future.

Immediate support to address dramatically increased organic input costs for organic dairy farms is urgently needed to reverse the alarming decline in family organic dairy farms in the northeast. Organic Farmers Association’s priorities for organic dairy will increase organic milk market transparency by requiring AMS to publish organic-specific data, invest in local infrastructure and ensure that disaster relief efforts support the specific needs of organic dairy farms. Systemic reforms such as those detailed in the Milk from Family Dairies Act are also needed to ensure farm viability and market opportunities for all family dairies.

USDA has a demonstrated history of discriminating against Black, Indigenous and farmers of color in lending and credit practices and program implementation. Our nation must take action now to facilitate secure, affordable access to land and access to credit for young farmers and farmers of color—there is no time to wait. The reforms in the Justice for Black Farmers Act and the Fair Credit for Farmers Act are a first step in addressing and correcting discrimination against Black farmers in farm assistance and lending programs and to ensure representation on county FSA committees. 

Farmland that is contaminated with PFAS (aka “forever chemicals”)  is a threat to public health and farm viability and must be addressed to ensure a safe and prosperous future.  As PFAS contaminated soil, milk, and even produce and crops are detected, farm families and farmworkers are most vulnerable and need immediate support to protect themselves, their business, and their communities against continued exposure. The Relief for Farmers Hit with PFAS Act would authorize funding for states to assist affected farmers, expand monitoring and testing, and fund PFAS research.  

We join with our allies across the many sectors of the food system in opposing legislation that will increase consolidation and corporate power through mechanisms that prioritize short term profit over long term sustainability, such as carbon markets and biogas markets. These false solutions focus too narrowly on carbon or methane at the detriment of biodiversity, ecosystem health and function, and allow bad actors to continue to pollute while further entrenching farmers in systems of chemically-intensive agriculture. (To learn more about what we mean by "false solutions", check out this explainer from our allies at IATP.)

NOFA-VT is on the steering committee of the 2023 VT Farm Bill Nutrition Coalition, through which we have collaboratively developed a set of nutrition-specific policy priorities in addition to the farming and agriculture-specific policy priorities above. While the farm bill can't address many systemic issues contributing to hunger, the federal nutrition programs within the Farm Bill provide a critical safety net for the 2 in 5 people in Vermont who experience hunger. The reauthorization of these programs by Congress every five years provides an opportunity to improve and strengthen the way they work in Vermont, and ensure all who are in need have equitable access to strong and responsive programs.