One of my favorite parts of fall in Maine is attending the Common Ground Fair in Unity. 

It’s hard to beat seeing the bountiful Maine harvest, meeting great new people, and eating all that delicious fair food of course.

Much has changed in the 30-plus years since I started attending the fair, which the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners and Association (MOFGA) put on to highlight sustainable living. 

In those days, back-to-the-landers like us were on the fringe. 

While we celebrated organic growing and small, diversified farms, the national food system was giving way to large-scale, chemical-dependent, industrial agriculture.
But our movement has only grown stronger over the years. Go to the fair this fall and you’ll see dozens of young, passionate farmers, and thousands of people who are just as passionate about eating healthy food grown and produced by people they want to form a relationship with. But you don’t just see evidence of this trend at Common Ground Fair.
The number of farmers markets in the U.S. has skyrocketed, acres in agricultural production in Maine are increasing and Walmart is a leading distributor of organic food.
This is no longer a fringe movement.
However, while we’ve evolved federal policy has not. It’s still stuck in the 1970s. Policies continue to favor agribusiness commodity crops and a system that trucks food thousands of miles. And as great as the local food movement has been, it could create even more jobs for our economy if there were fewer hurdles and better support from federal agriculture policy.
One of my biggest priorities this year has been trying to change that. With the Farm Bill coming up for its 5-year authorization, I introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act last fall. It proposes common-sense changes to make the Farm Bill work better for regional food systems, empower consumers who want to eat healthy, and level the playing field for small, diversified farms.
In a time of unprecedented partisanship, I’ve been excited and encouraged to see many of these reforms move forward with support from both parties.
In June, the Senate passed its version of the Farm Bill, and in July, the House Agriculture Committee, which I sit on, passed its own. Between the two versions, several of the changes I proposed remained intact.

Reforms included

Several reforms included farm-to-school programs that give schools flexibility to spend some of their federal school lunch dollars on local food; diversified crop insurance and organic crop insurance programs like what's offered to large-scale commodity producers; grants to help farmers make investments to increase the value of their products, such as installing a creamery to make cheese; and making it easier for those who receive SNAP benefits to buy food directly from farmers.

Unfortunately, House Republican leadership won’t bring the Farm Bill to the floor for a vote – even though its own members on the Agriculture Committee already approved it. 

The stonewalling is extremely frustrating, not just to me, but to farmers across the country who want to know what agriculture policy will be for the next five years.

Still, I’m optimistic that we can make some of these important reforms into law when Congress gets back around to considering the Farm Bill. But that’s only the beginning. 

The movement to a food system that is better for our health, economy and environment won’t stop anytime soon, and I will continue fighting for federal policy that reflects those values.