We had a great Annual Meeting on March 4th and enjoyed seeing so many of our members.

Thanks for signing up to volunteer to restore a watershed, fight radioactive waste, and help Missouri thrive.

MCE’s Annual Meeting: 3 p.m. Sunday, March 4, 2012 at Cicero’s

6691 Delmar Blvd., 63130 in St. Louis’ fabulous Delmar Loop district.

"); ">RSVP Now.

November 7, 2011

As you read this, the Farm Bill is being written in secret by the leaders – not all the members – of the House and Senate agriculture committees.  They intend to bypass even the members of their own agriculture committees and submit their legislation directly to the secretive Super Committee.

What that means to Missouri is that Frank Lucas (R-OK), Committee Chairman and Collin Peterson (D-MN), Ranking Member on the House side and, on the Senate side, Debbie Stabenow, Michigan, Chairwoman and Pat Roberts, Kansas, Ranking Member will be calling the shots in the bill that will govern our food system for the next 5-10 years. Even Missouri’s only House ag committee member,  Vicky Hartzler (MO), is shut out, along with the rest of us Americans not represented by industrial ag lobbyists.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, as the Super Committee is more properly known, was given a single task and it is right in its name  - to reduce the federal deficit.  But somehow their duties have expanded to include passing the farm bill as well – just the farm bill.  No other committee is attempting to pass its legislation via this secretive process-not Transportation, not Judiciary, not Housing and Urban Development- just the Agriculture Committees.

The Farm Bill is the bill that impacts the food we eat, how it is produced and how much we pay for it and it also affects whether 1 in six Americans have enough to eat at all.  It is NOT a bill that should be decided in secret with input only from agriculture industry lobbyists because all Americans eat.

If the Super Committee incorporates the Farm Bill into their proposal, it will enter a legislative black hole and the results aren’t likely to strengthen America’s food system.

It is not too late to derail this process which is designed to exclude input from the overwhelming bulk of legislators, citizens, conservationists, hunters, anglers, and anyone interested in improving the food system as well as virtually all farmers. It sidelines everyone except a select elite from industrial agriculture with huge checkbooks and DC lobbyists who push for increased subsidies that benefit a couple dozen rich corporations and a tiny percent of farms while they gut farm conservation and food programs and policies.

They want to exclude our voices and that of our representatives in Congress.   This sets a dangerous precedent. We strongly object to this secretive process and believe that a farm bill should be written in an open democratic process as it has been for generations.

Dear Leaders: Keep the Farm Bill OUT of the Super Committee, write the 2012 Farm Bill in 2012 in the open.

Office of Senator Roy Blunt
260 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-5721
Fax: (202) 224-8149

Office of U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill
United States Senate
Hart Senate Office Building, Ste. 506
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone 202-224-6154

You can reach House Members at
http://www.house.gov/ or (202) 224-3121

“Soil is the interface between lifeless cosmic rock and all terrestrial life.”      -An Urgent Appeal for Soil Stewardship        2009 Bouyoucos Conference on Soil Stewardship in an Era of Global Climate Change